Honda's Blog: Of Heroes and Monsters

Welcome back, ladies and germs!

I am happy to report that I have finished painting Ethanaal/Eldrad so that he will be available for our big game on 1/3/15. 

I'm fairly happy with the blend of colors. I wanted him to stand out from the rest of my Eldar, so that meant using rich colors, yet staying within the palette I defined for myself (Sand, Turquoise, Purple). The only "step-out" was the warm yellow band that I used to separate the purple from the turquoise.

That was a bit of a gamble in that, from a color wheel perspective, yellow is a good contrasting color, but I wanted to make sure that it remained a soft contrast and didn't hit the viewer across the eyes. So I started off with a brown base, then mixed in some GW Averland Sunset and Vallejo Pale Sand to lighten, eventually working in some Vallejo Off White to get the paleness I was looking for.

The other thing I was aware of is that there are a lot of different types of white on the figure, e.g. helmet, gloves, rune armor. So I needed something that wasn't white, yet gave me a lighter boundary between the darker fabrics.

It seems to work.

I'm still fiddling around with lists and available figures, so I'm not exactly sure what will be showing up just yet, but I'm sure I'll have fun, no matter what the list ends up looking like.

Here are all the HQ choices (i.e. heroes) I will have for the game, Karandas, Eldrad, and Illic Nightspear.

At this point, I could sit and twiddle my thumbs waiting for Santa to surprise me, but I'm just not wired that way. So, grasping the Minotaur by the horns, I negotiated a trade with El Jefe, painted Kasrkin Storm troopers for two boxes of Wraithguard. This deal should close in another week or two, but that doesn't leave me much time before the game, so it looks like Honda's "Paint-o-rama" (tm) will be working holiday hours this year.

While sorting through some old containers, I found this:

It appears to be an old WFB Wood Elf Wardancer. Now when I first saw her, I thought perhaps she'd be a good Harlequin stand in, but I had been figuring that if I made any of those, I'd probably convert them from DE Wyches, so that was out because I want the "styling" of that unit to be consistent.

Then it occurred to me, perhaps a Jain Zar stand in or a Howling Banshee Exarch. I'm not sure, I'll have to think on this a little more which means, I'll probably not start painting her just yet.

So I was back to square one, me sitting at my hobby desk, fingers and paint brushes twitching.

Which is my segue into the "monsters" portion of the post. First some background.

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My youngest son (turns 15 this week) has been an Ork player for several years now. However, he has been scratch building and converting Orks since he was eight or nine. His imagination is truly Ork inspired and some of the things he comes up with just blows my mind. He will pick up a bit, doesn't matter what it is, and suddenly he gets a glint in his eye and then he's off to the races.

What he comes up with is truly frightening sometimes, in a very inspiring sort of way.

So he built this Warboss/Big Mek/Nob figure a couple of years ago. As soon as I saw it, I wanted to paint it, but he assured me that he would paint it. So I waited. However, he is not as inspired to paint his creations as I am driven to paint things, so we have since worked out a deal where, he builds and I paint.

So I got to paint this guy, this Warboss, this...MONSTER. 

Note: These are work in progress shots. I've just started on the armor and some of the surrounding bits.

He's made up of all sorts of stuff from who knows where. I'm pretty sure the Bosspole is part of a Deffcopta helicopter blade. He came about because Super T (his nickname) wanted another mega armor Nob and he got tired of waiting for even a "rumor" of plastic meganobs. I'm glad he got impatient (another Ork trait) otherwise this guy might not have ever been built.

Now you may have noticed that he's kind of big. But how big is he?

So, yeah, he looks big, but then again who doesn't standing next to an elf? So how about this...

Yeah, he's freaking huge. (greg edit: He's propa sized :) ) That is him dwarfing one of my Templar terminators. So he truly is a monster.

It also seems appropriate that he have a suitably monstrous name, so I present to you Warboss Bludskull Kilfist. I suspect he has a very long and bloody history ahead of him.

Until next time.

Cheers!