More ladies

From the Wild West Exodus Wayward Eight set, we have a certain companion.

Here she is:

http://www.wildwestexodus.com/sierra-icarus-mercenary/

I am still getting used to painting the "regular" Wild West miniatures at this point.  Up until now, I had painted the equivalent of 6 or 7 vehicles. :-)

I have a set of regular Lawmen under way, and I am hoping to get those in playable condition so that we can get to some battle reports for you!

Another tank division takes shape...

So, when you have a bunch of colors sitting out there on the palette, and you know you don;t need them for what's right in front of you, you either let it dry out or grab something else!

With the partially restored work area, I had the Panzers sitting nearby.  That meant I could use up all the leftover colors for a good purpose!  Tiny tanks for Memoir '44!

While I enjoyed the desert paint scheme, I was looking forward to the standard early war gray since I knew the weathering would really show up nicely.

I had mixed greenish gray, blue/gray, even some pink in the gray, just to create that variety in shade to force some extra shape onto something so small.

It was pretty much everything I put into the Shades of Gray video. :-)

Ooh, and I just had to try these out on a backdrop with some green!

With the Foxy Desert Panzers...

One unit of late war camo pattern Panzers are on the way, so that will make for some fun group shots!

Ready for action!

Order from chaos?

I was fortunate enough this weekend to get a little assist in attempting to reinvigorate a work area that has been brutalized by way too much work, and far too many disasters.

This is about as organized as the paint jars have been over the last 8 months or so.

So, a certain purveyor of laser cut wood said they would come to the rescue!  And so, we have some nifty products from Burn In Designs.

Here's the full range:

http://www.burnindesigns.net/

Right away, I figured that I could get just about all my jars of paint into these.  I don't have all that many.  Shockingly few, in fact!  Here are some Secret Weapon washes finding a home...

Since I have ended up with a majority of the dropper style bottles now... we have this set up!

It's a "snap" to put together...yup, I went there.

Ready for paint!

Filling up fast, and emptying out the food containers at last.

Armed and dangerous!

It's amazing what this did already, and there are many more products that can solve a host of other organizing issues.  The jars of paint really stay in these very well, so it also means viability of transport too!

Ah yes, back home again.  Typical look of the workstation.  Since every day has become an exercise in madness, I have taken to the "pull and toss" method.  That is, pull a jar of paint out of the box and toss it aside so that I can get back to painting more quickly.

This leads to multiple jars of the same color piled up around me, to the point where I am actually resting my arms on the rolling jars as I paint.  Lots of them simply end up on the floor.

Yikes!  What happened?!

Those of you who have watched me paint via the blog, in person or have seen some of the videos know that I will use old jars of paint to hold miniatures that have been based or parts of figures.

Many times, I have knocked over those jars onto the palette.  Those days are now gone!  Now they will all be held in place.  Yay!

Looks just a wee bit different, doesn't it?  

So, a shout out to Burn In Designs!!!  Thanks so much!

Dinos riding dinos!

This is another one of my favorites from the Lizardman army.  Loq Qar, the canosaur!  Obviously I had some fun with the conversion element of the piece.

It took quite some doing to get the wings on there.  Lots of green stuff around the connection point to make it both stable and somewhat logical.

The head piece was made from plasticard and green stuff.  It says his name in Lizard glyphs.

The view from above.  I will post some more pictures of the underside, with all the dramatic OSL.

I first made this figure when the Lizard book allowed you to do sacred spawnings for your Saurus.  One of them was Immune to Psychology, which I intended to show by creating a unit of saurus on lava bases in the same colors as this.

Sadly, that was all wiped out in the new book.  Then everything I did was wiped out again in the 8th edition version, only to be wiped out again in the next.  Sensing a theme yet?

At least I still have this one around!  I am still tempted to make the new kit and paint it like this, just to see them side by side :-)

These are the old GW dragon wings, by the way.

It always looks so different depending on which backdrop I use!

Anyway, I do have a few of the newer monster sets, so I will be painting those... along with a bunch of terradons!

So, the Legions of Babo are not yet doomed to obscurity.  They are just hanging out in the jungle for a while!

Hangin' out in the jungle... skink style

Next up, chameleon skinks!

These fun little guys were among the last things I painted for the army.  As you can see, lots of different colors went into them!

Each skink was painted a different color... just for the heck of it.

There was also one conversion of a regular skink to fill out the second unit...

http://wappellious.blogspot.com/2012/02/chameleon-skinks.html

Here's something on the movement trays (there are three articles in all):

http://wappellious.blogspot.com/2012/05/skirmishing-movement-trays-for-skinks.html

A few of my objective markers in this image...

The magnets revealed!  Be sure to check out all three phases of the movement trays!  Plus this on for the terradon units.

http://wappellious.blogspot.com/2012/02/images-of-converted-terradons-on.html

Wee little skinks

Yes, and a few bigger buddies. :-)

I used to love these units in my original armies.  They were my "foot cavalry", moving at high rates, hitting hard with the proper buffs, little surprises thrown in, shooting lots of poison, and so on.

I have been very dismayed at all the subsequent changes between the new army books and the dreaded FAQ's, which seem bound and determined to make these as useless as possible.

First an foremost, they were a joy to paint, since the relatively untextured skin of these little guys was like a blank canvas!

You give this many blank canvases to a maniac like me... and one never knows what might happen!

I loved trying out different color schemes for each unit.  That was very fun, but it also helped for game play.  The opponent would not see me eyeing one of my units, or rummaging through my army list to see who had what.  I knew just by looking at the color of the skinks, or the chief inside... even the priest, what they could do.

There were four different colored units of this size.  It was a wonderfully compact and maneuverable unit that had fear, higher leadership, full command, fast, shooting, ranks, and even some high strength attacks.

They could easily go into buildings and terrain, and support each other.

They were also light on points, and were basic troops!

I had at least 2-3 of these in 'average' game sizes.  For the bigger games, I would bring out the "Skink Tank" which I showed a few weeks ago.

I was surprised at how nice this unit looked on the red backdrop.  I was hesitant to even try it.  That's why I love all the Hangar 18 backdrop options!  One never knows until you set it up and snap some images!

Next up I will feature some Chameleon Skinks.  I enjoyed painting those, and making the movement trays for them.