Honda's Blog: Class Picture Day

Wow! What a blur of a week. I guess not being imprisoned by the results of Snowmageddon Episode 29 helped a little bit.

However, interfaces between the Real World (tm) and Toy World (tm) were pretty infrequent, fairly rushed and as a result, sometimes intense. The good news is that I feel like a made good progress towards our looming April 11th game, which is Part II of the Pathos IV narrative.

Those of you with the "deer in the headlights" look can jump here real quick and get caught up. Go ahead, I'll wait till you get back.

Assault on Pathos IV

"Picture" day.

Everyone's favorite day at school, Not! Mom's always seemed to decide to give us haircuts to help us look all scholarly or something. In my case, I always had to wear "wingtips" to school, despite the fact that all the pics were from the shoulders up. As if I didn't already have enough problems being a nerd (because that was back before it was cool), now my Mom wanted me crank the Nerd dial to 13.

So I did what any good son does when your Mother wants you to do something in front of your classmates that you just know will destroy any chance you have of sticking your nose a few centimeters above the waterline at the Nerd pool.

I walked out the door in the wingtips and swapped them out when I got to school, using the "emergency" pair of Vans that I had stored in my locker.

Just like everyone else did.

I guess I always was a bit pragmatic.

What does this have to do with toy soldiers? Nothing really, but if you sometimes wonder where certain personal characteristics come from once you've matured, there are usually clues in your past.

Okay, first up, Wave Serpent #4. Now all my Wraithguard have a ride, which is a good thing. There's nothing like having to resolve an argument with four squads and three rides. Nobody wants to walk and trying to get them to work it out with "rock-paper-scissors" or drawing straws never seems to get anywhere.

So now I don't have to deal with that issue anymore. Except for the fact that I don't have a turret for this one yet, so I have to hurry up and get that finished before the arguments are around why "they" get a Wave Serpent with a turret and "we" don't. 

For an ancient race, they are really petty sometimes.

Initially, I was going to paint this one just like the others, but as the airbrush started doing its own thing, the camo scheme slowly evolved into more of a three color lizard pattern. The colors are pretty subtle, so they don't stand out quite as much as they do in real life, but I'm pretty happy with the overall effect.

Next up is the Pale Knight. I'd like to be able to call him the Dark Knight, but there just isn't anything "dark" about him. Maybe next time.

Also, here's a shot of him next to a Wraithguard just for comparison, sort of a "Big Brother/Little Brother" kind of thing.

Next up...well, remember last week when I said weird stuff happens. Apparently it didn't stop.

While I was looking at the vehicle for some inspiration, I got the idea of trying to develop a camo scheme that was vaguely Harliquinesque...which MS Word doesn't think is a real word, but then I don't care.

I sort of got the idea from looking at Gar's (the "dark" side of the Eldar kin) masking efforts for his Razorwings and something that would better fit my army approach.

The Black Halo

So I started off by painting the vehicle a darker brown, then began over spraying lighter shades of brown to  provide a gradation of color towards the cab of the chassis.

Then I cut a bunch of little blue diamonds from masking tape and "Yes" , that was a pain in the neck.

Then I switched to the standard palette of colors for my vehicles, though creating bands of strong sand color contrasting softer, less concentrated bands. In a way, very similar to the lizard banding on the above Wave Serpent.

Once that was done, then I peeled off the tape diamonds and after looking at it for awhile, ended up liking the effect.

When I get to the point of painting up Harlequin vehicles, I will use the same technique, but with multi-colored diamonds.
Following that, I then applied the artist charcoals to the recesses and whatnots.

Once all the bits were put together, it ended up looking like this.

Those of you who have been blessed/cursed with the "continuity" gene, will note from last week's post that "something" is different. That something being a big honking gun sticking out of the front. I rather like how that turned out and sometimes you just don't know what's going to happen when you stick your hand in your bitz box.

Now all I have to do is seal, finish the bases and then come back and do some jewel work.

After looking at the end result, I realized that much like the Land Raider chassis, I just love the design and elegance of the Falcon chassis. It makes me want to experiment when I get some more chassis.

So, I think that's about it for this week. At some point I need to get some more games in as it's been awhile and I don't want to get stale with my army. There's nothing more annoying that remembering after the game all the cool things you could have done.

As we all know from the "Book of Things Eldrad Never Said": Those Runes won't freaking read themselves, you have to make the right choice!

Until next time!

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