A very brief break from Tomb Kings...

For those of who who are not as interested in the long run Tomb Kings postings, I do apologize.  I will try to pop in a few non TK things here and there for you!  However, it has been very fun for me (and very helpful as well) to have this day by day accounting of what has been done.  When I looked at a post from the 19th of June during that "Long Night" of the qualifier, I saw just how much I had accomplished in only 10 days.

That gave me a boost to keep upright for the rest of that day.

Here's a few Ilyad ladies:

Rolling On! Chariots work in progress

This post will give you a fairly good idea of how I am going about making those chariots!  Settra was a bit of a sneak peek into this process :-)

I began by adding to the horses themselves.  There was some artwork in the army book that made me want to put these "blankets" on the horses.  I created the blanket using green stuff and pieces of plasticard on a flat surface, so that I could make a one piece mould.  Once the mould was made, all I had to do was press in some green stuff and 'poof', armored blankets.  Tin foil was used on the back side of them to keep the green stuff from sagging.







Once all the blankets were done, it was time to start painting them!  Here are the initial layers of paint, what I called my "primer painting", since I was mixing paint in with the primer.  That really cuts down on the time spent priming!







This next stage saw the development of some of the colors on the horses and the crews.  I was trying to make sure to shift the colors from one chariot to the next.




Here is a shot of the bases, showing the big design that besically established the theme of the army!


Now for the most recent image.  The front row of chariots had the horses and crew worked up some more, and some more work on the bases.  Stay tuned for more!

A few more tidbits for the army...

Here's a couple of command figures for the Tomb Kings.  Each of these guys will go with a batch of skeleton archers inside the Tomb.

Behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.

Of course he's pale!  He is a skeleton after all.

I guess I have not even come close to catching up on sleep. :-)  Anyway, I discovered this guy a few weeks ago when I was looking for something else.  I almost squished him.

Nearly 14 months ago, in the earliest days of my excitement over Tomb Kings, I had started converting/sculpting this miniature.  I never had a death mage before, and I thought that lore might have some synergy with the Tomb King lore.  However, Death magic has that notoriously short range.  Since I wanted to have a 'fast' army of horsemen and chariots, I thought I could put a lower level liche priest on a horse and stick him in a unit of skeleton horses.

The plan was to ride up to a unit, mess with their leadership (Doom & Darkness), and then whack them with a big chariot unit with a character that had the Golden Death Mask.  It never really panned out that way.

I also thought it looked neat!

When the early tests of the army went horrifically bad, I kinda forgot all about him.

Since I was painting all these other horses (for chariots, horse archers, etc.), I began to want to see this mage be completed.  He will go in the front row with the Horse arechers on the board.

Here are some pictures:




Since I first started working on this figure, I have become much more familiar with the green stuff work needed to make these conversions have that Tomb Kings look.  I added a few extra tidbits today as I was green stuffing a whole new batch of Forgeworld commission pieces.

More images:

We have Liftoff! Moving on to Games Day!

Sorry for the delay folks!  We didn't even get back to the house until 1am, and I found myself falling out of the chair when I tried to process these images. :-)  So, I had to wait until I recovered to get tho them!

It was nice to finally see everything put together for the first time!





I got a chance to see just what the lights could do, and if people would actually take the time to look at everything and read the story, etc.



You can see that I had the story placed on top of the army board, and it was still difficult to get people to notice it, much less read it.  Since it is a bit vital to the understanding of everything on the board, I will have to find some way of rectifying that.  I may have to do some kind of blurb on another piece of papaer with a small illustration, kind of like the inside leaf of a book cover (or movie preview!) to draw people in.

We arrived at the store around 10am, with the voting to begin at 5pm.  I had counted on having some time, so I sat down to work:




I decided to hit the Ushabti, since it would let me get them on the board to see what they would look like.









I am looking forward to having more of them out on the board, as well as all the skeleton guards.  The Necro Knights and additional chariots will really chew up almost 80% of the open space you see in the photos.





Once the voting was done, I put the titan on the board to give folks an idea of what is coming...




You will continue to see lots of updates here, all the way through July.  There will be other Games Day projects as well, such as the Great Taurus, the Hobgoblin wolf riders, LOTR stuff, a Decimator, and other random things!!!!!!!!!!!!!



Now I must get to all that!

Into the Eye of the Storm... judgement day part one

Lots of storms today, including this shelf cloud that everyone in the area snapped pictures of... then it travelled about 1200 miles to Washington DC!  Wow.

Well, I have been painting continuously since around midnight.  Now it is close to 7am, and I need to start packing up the painitng stuff to bring to the Bunker!  Sorry for such a miniamal post.  Hopefully there will be loads of stuff to share when I return! :-)

Here is a pic I shot while I was painting the glyph on the back wall of the tomb...

Charging towards the qualifier! Armies on Parade

I am not sure how many more posts I will be able to make in the next 24 hours, so here is the most cohesive batch of images I know I can put together!  Lots of work as a hammer away at this project all night long (cue Lionel Richie).  Since it has been just about sunrise when I crawled to bed over the last month or so, this may not be so unusual! :-)

My goal with every skeleton, on horse or on foot is to have no two alike.  Just like the Terra cotta soldiers that guarded the first Emperor's tomb in China, this force is supposed to be as unique as possible from one to the next.  It also makes it a lot more fun!