Working on Lady Sif this week.  Really fantastic pose. I really enjoy painting these miniatures.  It's almost entirely contrast plus some metallics, with just a bit of pres-hading doing most of the heavy lifting.

This model has a lot of nooks and narrow raised sections.  Lot of fun to paint, but lot of careful tedious manuvering!
​

Happy with how the model came out in the end! Hope you like her!

As always, if you want to skip ahead, you can always go to

https://www.greggles.art/

to see all my finished models.  

Hey all, currently working on some of the new MCP models for Asgardians (Thor, Mighty Thor, Loki, and Lady Sif).  The nice thing about blogging is I should actually remember what paints I used this time, instead of trying to figure out what I did based on process of elimination!

It's been awhile since I painted, so I started with what I felt would be an easier to model to work with.  I chopped off his hair, as I felt it didn't go well with the model.  I also don't like the standard practice of "my power color is the same as my suit color" which works pretty well for the comics, but really clashes on the table.  All my characters have a color which stands out from the rest of the model to help it pop on the table.

With all these models I did my standard grey primer, followed by a light zenithal spray of pure white over the upper sections of the model (more like 70%).  I then follow with a satin varnish to help with wash/contrast adherence and to protect the zenithal.

Paints Model:
GW Warp Lightning Contrast
GW  Bad Moon Yellow Contrast
GW Guilliman Flesh Contrast
GW Talassar Blue (very thin)
Vallejo Model Air Silver
GS El Dorado
GS Shiny Gold
Army Painter Dark Tone
GW Sepia Tone Wash

Paints Base: 
GW Dawnstone
GW Ulthuan Grey (dry brush)
Army Painter Dark Tone (Thinned)
GW Garaghaks Sewer Contrast (super thin)

Yet to Come: 
Green Stuff World Flour Powders

These models paint really nicely and are a great palette cleanser vs some of the more bling covered GW style minis.  Highly recommend giving some of them a try if you enjoy the comic book universe.  (It's also a pretty fun game to play!).

Updated blog post with finished photos!

For a gallery of all my finished works, visit

​https://www.greggles.art/

Hey all! Hope everyone is doing well.  It's been a minute since I blogged anything...got on that social media train for a few years, until the train caught fire and spewed toxic garbage everywhere.  Now going back to blogging and storing my art on websites instead of platforms which own everything you upload.  Hope some of you are still around!

I am splitting my blogging and gallery into two sites.  The gallery will be at greggles.art (still under construction), and the blog posts will be here.  I do also have a bluesky greggles.art account, but I don't think I'll be investing much energy into social media after abandoning three platforms in a row!

Hey everyone! Hope you are all doing fantastic, and are super excited for the upcoming Nova Open!  I know I am!  I've been horrible with updating the blog, as most of my energy now flows into twitter, but I thought I would update you all just the same!  I've got a slew of new models to show off today!

First my friends, I'd like to show off my looted armigers.  I picked up a trio of armiger kits awhile back, in the hopes of eventually building them up as deff dreads to fit with the similar looted knight setup as the rest of the army. They saw some initial modification, then I hit a brick wall, because their design is subtly different then the bigger knights, and I couldn't quite get a handle on converting them.  I finally lit a fire up under my butt in the past month when I realized I really did not like my old bad moon deff dreads, and either going with a whole nother kit of deff dreads, or working the armigers up was going to have to happen.

I did finally fall in love with these once I figured out the mega nob jaw would fit under the heads, creating the full ork look.  Without the jaw the face just kinda of hangs there, and didn't look right.  The reason these guys are on 60mm bases is because they are deff dreads (2 big shoota, 1 kmb, 1 saw), and I wysiwig'd them to work as such!

Here is a shot of the three of them together.  I tried to vary the armor plates, configuration of the exhausts, big shoota types, and claws/saws to add some variety and break them up a bit.  Lots of little gubbins and changes like I normally do!

Then we come to the big big guy!  I'm super happy with how he came out.  When the new chaos knight kit came out, I had to get it and make up another looted knight.  This is a counts as Morkanaut, so I have four total now (2 mork, 2 gork).  I had a lot of fun converting this one.  I was building struts, flipping titan weapons around, all sorts of goodies.  What is really crazy is just how far the weathering technique has come since I first did the yellow banana orks.  Wow what a difference now.  It's like HD vs SD chipping!  I love how each one of the knights tends to take on a bit of characteristic.  This one feels a bit like the jet pack deff dread, as he's a bit bruiser, bent low and ready to charge in.

Last but not least, some army shots for you all.  I had to tweak the top shelf to get everyone to fit, but they made it!  I'm going to need a bigger tablewar case just to hold all these guys.  It takes two right now!  I'll be in both Trios and Narrative at Nova, so please stop by and say hi!  Hope you are all having a great hobby time, and I'll talk to you soon!

Note, you can click on the link to go to the full res images.  These are just embeds for the sake of easy sharing!

Welcome my friends! Boy do I have a post for you today.  I finished not one, not two, but three new deff dreads for my deathskulls.  I was a painting machine this last week!

So I was sitting around, getting my adepticon list ready for Travel.  Was originally going to bring a host of minis, (two 1500 point lists), but it was getting ridiculous.  I can't bring the big dreads AND a 1500 brigade, its just way too many models.  So I decided on just the dread slam, because everyone loves the ork dreads walking around and getting blown up.  So I assembled them.  Three deff dreads, 2 gorkanauts, 1 morkanaut, 1 meka dread, and a big mek.  The big mek I didn't have any more (so you saw that guy get painted up)...and well the deff dreads, the deff dreads were looking prettttty bad.

In fairness, these dreads had been painted twice over (without stripping), without much care and attention to adding contrast or detail to them.  (just general blocking of colors).  You can really see (in the following photos), just how far I've taken the chipping and weathering by comparison (These dreads were painted for Nova Open 2015 above).

I went about making these dreads to match the latest buggies and giant walker I created, so they follow a similar style of painting.  Skeletal understructures are done in a more clean metallic, to contrast with the sharp wear of the armor plates.  It's a tabletop scheme and works well.  The poses and exhausts were also designed for maximum game play (bit static, but won't pop off or snap) with exhausts modified to reduce "snapability".  Anyone who has ever played with a deff dread knows how easy those top exhaust manifolds pop off.  This also gave all three dreads very individual character.  This one if very much the "little brother" of the group.

 This one uses a miscast of a mega dread engine to replace the stock one.  It fit so well, I just had to use it.  I did however weigh down the front section of the base with double 3/8 washers. Both this dread and it's little brother make use of the wazzbomb jet's smasha gun as a 3rd KMB.  I felt using the KMB on the upper arm made it look too weedy, so found this gave a good balance vs the CC weapon on the other arm.

All the dreads have washer weights, but this one, and the next one have the double offset weights.

Last but not least, the big un!  Some of you may remember the old flying deff dread I did for Nova Open Charity four years ago (geez!).  I included him as the last photo in this batch.  Well I really liked that dread, and wanted to do a more gaming oriented version of him. (along with applying newer skills!).  This is the result.  I wanted to get a pose as if he was either 1) Landing or 2) About to engage the thrusters for a charge.  I'm really happy with him, and he really has an awesome presence on the field.

Some closeups of the armor plates.  I feel this is some of my best weathering work to date.  It's so good it makes even the last few pieces I did look a bit paler in comparison!  Ha, that's what you get for working on an entire army.  You'll always be better at the end then the beginning!

Speaking of the army! Here is my list for Adepticon! Army is looking fantastic, and I love the yellow/blue mix, really works well.  I think I'll try to keep around a 50/50 mix of bad moonz and death skulls (maybe mix in some goffs or evil suns) just to add some variety and pops of color.  Army is really growing over time!

Thank you all for your constant encouragement and support.  It's done wonders for my hobby fuel, and my progress over the years!  See you at adepticon! Remember to follow my twitter for up to the date photos and shenanigans!

Hey everyone! Hope your Adepticon prep is going well! Been enjoying seeing what everyone is working on!  I'm still slugging away at my final pieces for my dread slam list.  The first of which is an old school Big Mek!

I've wanted this mini for quite some time.  It's always been extremely expensive on ebay (well past 50 bucks), so been biding my time.  Was finally able to get one through a friend of a friend, so painted him up as well as I could.  Pretty happy with how he came out for an old metal mini.  Who would have thought the secret was tons of varnish at various stages...YES I HEAR YOU TODD. :)

Now working on three (yes three) deff dreads, as the old yellow ones are not up to snuff.  Oh boy. What did I get myself into.

Welcome back everyone! Put the finishing touches on my megatrakk scrapjet finally.  Another buggy for the army!

How are you all liking the slideshows vs the gallery? Preference of one or the other?

This model has been on the bench for awhile.  I had to paint the crew before assembling it, so it was a long multi-part process.  The next one (if I do another one) will probably be 50x faster, just because now I know its pointless to paint the crew first, especially when you go to assemble it and nothing lines up right!

I'm glad it is finally done, and I'm quite happy with it.  This time I also included a video of me chipping the paint off the model, so you can all see my excitement in realtime!

Hope everyone is doing well! Looking forward to adepticon!

Hey everyone! Welcome back! Been prepping for adepticon, and trying to get my lists nailed down for pickup games and the friendly.  I'm "trying" to bring two completely different 1500 point lists to adepticon.  We'll see if it happens.  Got myself some stickers that I'll be handing out.  Just a silly idea from the painting chat that came out pretty good!  Please do not apply to ones butt. :)  (Note if you want a sticker, let me know after adepticon, and I'll have a second batch that I ship out to peoples).

In hobby news, I painted up some Anti-sniper grots.  These were some old metal models, one of them given to me by one of my good friends.  They've been sitting around for ages, so was happy to finally get them painted!  Anti sniper you say?  Grot orderly and Grot oilers attach to their respective painboy and big mek's as a character unit, so if someone uses their new fancy sniper to try and kill the painboy, you just take the hit on the grot.  Basically gives you one extra turn before your characters get murdered!

I also painted up this grot from the stompa kit.  He's been being painted for months and months.  I couldn't stand this model.  Everything is basically moulded into one blob of stuff, without clean defining sections.  As such it was a bit of a hurtle to get him looking decent, which is both why there isn't a fancy photo of him, and some details might be a bit more "Tabletop".  I'm happy he is done, and not going to worry about him too much, he is a grot after all.

Left in the possible queue for Adepticon.  One mega armored big mek with warp cannon thing.  One megatrukk buggy.  Three deff koptas.  Two deff dreads.  Few! We'll see how much gets done in time! Thanks for stopping by!

First off, a photo of a big mek with shokk gun I painted a few years ago!  (Sept 2010 to be exact!).  Lets see how I've done across the years!

Trying the slide show display now, tell me how you all like it, or if you prefer the older method!  This guy was an absolute bear to paint.  So many endless gubbins and bits.  One thing about characters, they sure stand out from the standard troops!  One thing I am going to change about this guy in the future, is the glow on the shock gun.  I think I'm going to swap all the glows on the deathskulls to purples or oranges, so we get a bit of contrast.  (oooh orange sound really good, I'll do a test with that later!).  This is the first ork I've now named.  Snazer Gob, who leads trustinrust in a new campaign narrative happening in the DC area!

Painted up the FW grots finally.  Originally they were going to be for the mek guns, but now mek guns don't really need crew anymore, so they became a new unit of grots in the army!

Next up is the warboss Grack Kruncher! He vies for command of trustinrust with Snazer Gob, constantly bickering and going back and forth.  Snazer wants more dreads, Grack wants more vehicles.  Very pleased with the squig on this guy.  The skin came out fantastic!   Head swap is from maximini from the tech freak line.

A new nob for the #deathskulls.  I am trying to make sure the army is What you see is what you get for adepticon, so lots of new models here and there.

The first of my new Mek's!  These guys really pack a punch if you are playing deathskulls.  Great force to play with, and a lot of character in his model too.  Eventually I'll go back and add some OSL.  Was trying to get them finished for a game, so final detail working out is still going on!

Second and final Mek!  For some reason the eye lenses on this guy just came out soooo flipping awesome.  They really catch your eye from tabletop height!

So what is next on the bench? Some repaints of other characters (like the warboss on the bike going badmoonz --> Deathskulls.  Two megatrakk buggies, and two deff dreads (deathskulls).  Then I should be all ready for adepticon!  Thanks for stopping by! Hope to have further updates soon!

This was a great piece of kit (except for the mouldines) and fun to put together and paint.  I concentrated on previous critique of my chipping, and tried to concentrate it on the forward section of the plates, where the band would be blasting off the paint as it moves with 0.1 inches of clearance at hundreds of miles an hour.

Since the model was so new, I didn't have any resin bases for it.  I used a combination of vallejo paste and stirland mud to create the texture.  I didn't want to do too much to it, as the model is pretty big on the base, so wanted to go simplier then more complicated.  This also let me play a little with some subtle osl on the back terrain with some powders.

I also had a lot of fun painting some tiny details, like a BSOD on the targeting computer the grot was using :).

Some shots of the buggy in production!  You can see how I broke it down into nice sub assemblies.  Below is also the paint guide and steps used in making it!

Was a fun kit, and now I have to start on the next one!  Some FW Grots will be up next on the blog! Thanks for visiting!

First off, while doing research on Paris, I met a local online Vermenarque who gave us a ton of tips and advice.  We met up with him and had a few drinks at a lovely cafe, and I gave him the first international Trust in Rust ambassador (as much as an ork can be an ambassador!).

He also did a bit of sight seeing.  The best part about this? Vermenarque's own orks were based on US cowboys....I can't make this up!  Worked out so nicely!

I also was able to finish up a deathskulls warboss.  Always liked this metal mini, and finally got one of my own.  I've gotten a lot better painting metal, I finally figured out to just varnish it a whole lot :).

I did experiment painting some triangles on the gun to break up the blue, but couldn't quite get them to look right.  Will keep practicing.  My freehand checks slowly get better every time.  Of course I'm not trying to make them perfect, as they'd never be perfect on an ork, just less messy :).

These guys are next up in the queue.  Decided to go with the shotgun approach to preparing for a new codex.  Just build every unit your army can possibly take :).    Plus these models are cool as hell!  Also got some more kill team terrain to paint up.  Been making oil washes for those as practice (Thanks Todd!).  Should have a post on those when they are all done.  Paris was also so wonderful.  Bit of a toss up whether I like it better then Rome.   Have to keep traveling to find out which place I like best! Spain is next year!  Hope you are all having a good Orktober!

Dave also won best painted this year! Congrats Dave! Well deserved!

As you can see, this matchup was gonna be a blast from the start.  Big giant stompy things vs big giant stompy things.  Dave's daemons are incredible. As you can expect, this game made khorne very happy.

Amanda sees an opening (bad bubble wrapping greg!) and charges a ridiculou distance (boy those galants can move, so jelly), and gets big blue into combat.  We do some damage, but down goes blue!

Amanda apologies profusely for destroying big blue.  (This is the last narrative night game, so we are drinking heavily).  I proceed to shoot her knight and the grots wound it! Much cheering in the room.  I then assault it with lots of things, and knock it down...that's right, knock it down, because knights can get up now after you kill them!  Dave moves his big nasty daemon walkers up, with the blood thirster, and annihilates a spartan and imperial knight on the right flank.  The grots take artillery fire, and make multiple 6+ saves, once again, much loud cheering and cursing.

Zhardsnark, and Dave's secondary forces wipe out all the enemy infantry on the board.  The buggies come in and fire rokkits at things, and wipe out HQ's that were left sitting around.  Amandas knight get backs up, kills the morkanaut, (stratagem that lets it fight at max power even with 3 wounds), we knock it down again.  Grots do wounds to it in CC.  Massive cheering.  Craigs deathwatch get out of the spartana (that dave blew up) and do something like 34 wounds to dave's daemons.  The right flank collapses.  Knock the warlord knight down a 3rd time, it finally dies.

Zhardsnark and the buggies make a play for the smaller shooty knight.  They knock it down.  It gets back up.  Everyone is laughing because this is just absurd.  Zhardsnark, the buggies, and the big mek all die.  The grots become super aggressive.  Start killing deathwatch.  Is there nothing they can't do? They try to assault everything.

The gorkanaut gets into range.  Kills all the remaining deathwatch (with the help of the grots).  Kills all the remaining infantry on their side, knocks the little knight down so hard, it doesn't even think about getting up.

Game ends.  One undamage imperial knight is all that remains of Craig and Amandas forces.  We have a half damaged gorkanaut.  One grot, and One daemon HQ khorne guy.   Because the mission was slaughter, we win because we have more of our forces left intact.  The Grots take the day!  Amazing and wonderful game!

The next day, Dave and I setup to have a fun game vs the armies we played with together in the previous game.  Orks vs Khorne!  As you can imagine, this game is gonna be FASSSST.  We basically charge each other.

We do some minor shooting to things, mainly picking off all of Dave's screening forces.  The orks in these photos are actually grots.  I had packed up my grots (they aren't magnetized) so we just used the boyz as counts as grots.  Giant walking daemon thing swings in, gets the first gork.  Does something like 30+ damage to it.  It explodes, hitting everything in 9 inches with D6 mortal wounds, doing probably 12+ damage to everything around.  Daemon princes are winching and the big walkers are damaged.  Orks counter attack, can not deal a wound to save their bacon.  9 rokkit's fire at the walker with 4 wounds left, not a single hit.

Big blue goes down to the blood thirster (boy that thing hits hard).  We also get it down to a few wounds.  Can not take the last few off.  I charge everything at it.

This about summarizes the result. :)  Great game, very fast, lovely models!  Always great fun playing with Dave!  That about summarizes my games at the Nova Open in 2018.  Hope you all enjoyed them! Back to the hobby now! (been working on tons of stuff!).  Have a good one everyone!

Off to the races, lets see how those green skins did!

First matchup vs tau was on a 4x4 board at 1k points.  Was feeling pretty confident here.  It looked like just a riptide, commander, and a nasty rail gun.  Orks got this!  I really needed to go first to get a good alpha strike.  (primary objective was securing the building).

I win to go first, but then John seizes.  That's ok because I'm mostly out of line of sight....until the commander moves 40 inches on top of the build, the riptide shoots to the side, and the rail gun terrain moves to get sight on the gorkanaut.  Oh oh.  Gorkanaut goes down almost instantly, and most (if not all the boy) die in a horrible fire.

The HQ is hidden in the fortification, so no way to get to him, and I lost 50% of my army in the first shooting phase of the game.  I quickly do the only thing I can do (being kunnin today).  I concentrate all my remaining firepower onto the comms array...if the orks can't have it, NOBODY CAN!.  I succeed in destroying it, and getting a few secondary objectives, so I'm not completely wiped out.  John laughs at my kunnin, as destroying the array also denies him primary points as well.  (playing for the team here!).  It's a sound win for John though, as the orks are wiped out to the boy!

Game two was live streamed!  I played with Dan and his gorgeous ravenguard, vs Chris and Mark and their awesome looking Tau.  You can see the stream here.

The game was shuttle crash, and we started at a major disadvantage.  I'm an index player, Dan's playing ravenguard, and our opponents have lists that share the same keyword (so overlapping overwatch, powers, can share marker lights etc).  It's gonna be a tough game.

So Mark and Chris castle in one corner, opposite of where the shuttle is coming in.  Dan and I setup roughly mid of the table, with as much los blocking between us and tau as possible.  Tau has everything from automatic hitting marker lights, to 6 inch longer pulse carbines.  Endless boons and bonuses!  We win to go first, and choose to go second (since its an objective mission).

First turn goes by.  Tau shoot us for at least 15 minutes.  About 50% of the boyz die, as well as a slew of hellblasters.  The gork makes a KFF save.  Dan and I discuss that there is absolutely nothing we can do vs the tau.  We'd just get annihilated out in the open.  We enact plan RUNAWAY.  (Or more like run to the objectives).

I use the weird boy to da jump the boyz over to the objective...and it so happens the that shuttle crashes right next to a LOS blocker.  So we shift our armies to go for the shuttle.  The tau are forced to redeploy their entire castle as all their guns are out of range.  We eliminate about 50% of their shooting by shifting the army.

We spend the next turn moving our entire army behind the LOS blocking building where all the objectives are.  I bring in the buggies and hide them as well.  The weediest player I have ever been!

As a last ditch effort to stall the tau advance (the suits are fast even if the firewarriors aren't), we throw the orks and walkers at the tau suits, finally getting to do something other then run away.  We use the buggies to grab all the objectives, and snag every possible point we can.

We kill the commander, and take the stealth suit to 1 wound (he made 7 saves on the last wound!).  Big blue finally killed something though!  We here the call for time, and the game ends at the bottom of three.  Win for orks and ravenguard!  Had it went another turn (or to its conclusion), I have no doubt tau would have won, as there was no way we could match the suits firepower or mobility.  Out in the open the gorkanaut wouldn't last a single phase.  Had the tau players castled in the center, and not a corner, we wouldn't have had a prayer.

The next game I played was vs Chris (from the previous game).  Great looking army, he also provided all the new terrain for the narrative, which was fantastic!  I really didn't luck out here.  Not only was Chris's list designed to kill knights (everyones was), but our deployment was hammer and anvil (whatever the furthest away was) and there wasn't any LOS terrain that could block the walkers.

The entire game was a mad dash to see if I could blow up his transport (game was convoy), before he blew me up.  I conceded turn 2 because I only had gretchin left on the board.  Need CODEX! :) (or maybe not mono build lists!!).

Chris was a wonderful guy though, and offered a kill team game afterwords.  Taught me kill team, then we played a nice short game.  (Orks won that, but I think he felt bad :) ).

Some kill team shots for you!  Look at that boy go!
Thanks for stopping by and reading about all the orks being shot up :).   One more set of battle reports next week!

I was especially happy because we got to play on the awesome Ork fort terrain, brought and supplied by Chris Stover.  It was a great looking board with two awesome armies matched up!  My list was bunch of walkers + stuff, Dan's was bunch of big buggies + gene stealer cult shennigans.

The mission was one of my favorite Narrative missions. Fuel Depot.  The little canisters you see around the table are worth 3 objective points each...but you can only "drain" 1 point a turn from them, starting on turn 2.  It means if you are crafty you can can get a lot of points through careful positioning.

Starting out with the game, I tried to bubble my walkers (to prevent cult ambush from having a good backfield entrance) and to stop any quick nid assaults...of course I haven't played nids since they got their codex.....boy are they fast!

Ork shooting is ineffective, even with dakka dakka.  Dan immediately starts throwing out -1's...thanks to dakka dakka I can't have my shooting removed (but he removes overwatch from big blue!).  Bugs run up and start dishing out damage.  One walker goes down, the other holds.

One of the funnier moments of the game, is when Dan "mind controls" one of the big walkers.  He mind controlled the morkanaut.  He asked about the guns.  Decided to shoot all the guns instead of having one CC attack vs the walker in front.  He then proceeded to miss with every single gun on the morkanaut.  How do you like that ork BS? hahah.

The gene stealer cult ambush comes in, and immediately annihilates a walker.   The boyz then annihilate the gene stealer cult ambush, and a majority of the nearby nids.  The Meka dread and gorkanaut on the bottom level wipe out the termagaunts, swarmlord, and gene stealers.

My buggies pop in the rear, and with zhardsnark (you can see him fly to the other side of the board, he's so good), take out his rear backfield, which enables me to drain lots of fuel in a single turn.  (I max out on primary at 9 points).    The buggies and zhardsnark put some damage on the nid characters, and push back.   Dan is just left with his big bugs...but I'm out of heavy hitters (the gork goes down).  It does't look good for the orks.  The game ends before the rest of the bugs can really dish out maximum damage.  Final score ends up being 19 dan (nids), 14 greg (orks).  Very close game! (Dan got warlord, first blood, linebreaker, and max secondary and a bunch of primary).  Super fun first game.  (You can see the photos drop off as we got drunk...great box of wine!).