I always love to go and check out some of Reaper's preview pages. They always have some fine miniatures to look at and anticipate. And ever since they started up their Chronoscope line, you really have no idea what to expect from them, from warcasters to biker girls to pregnant orcs.



Also, Jason Weib's idol is something I wasn't expecting to see:































The real problem is that they aren't available just yet, so I'm always a little disappointed that I can't paint any of them right now.

Hordes Minion book official

Many are still wondering exactly what the switch to faction specific books will do to Warmachine and Hordes. One part of the puzzle that hasn't landed yet is what will become of the Hordes Minions who aren't associated with any faction?

As part of a hint heavy episode of Privateer Press' "Insider," Jason Soles announced that he has been working hard on some new additions to the Minions Faction Book.

What could be in a Minions faction book? It might make Minions into a playable faction- in the same way that Mercenaries became a faction with Escalation.

Mind, that was an accident. Privateer Press spent a year telling people that Mercenaries were not a faction before creating more detailed rule in No Quarter #1.

While I'm sure that Privateer Press staffers want to avoid that trouble a second time, I think they also have been pretty open to adding new factions deliberately. The first two forces books we saw were the Pirates of the Broken Coast and the Retribution of Scyrah.

Some of my friends have taken the way that the new Hordes PDF cards for the minion warlocks to mean that there will be more Gatorman and Farrow warbeasts. There could be a lot more than that going on too.

So, will Minions become a faction of their own? Or will they simply add enough new minions to the existing ranks to fill out an entire book?

Painting Hotrod Flame Designs

Painting freehand is a great way of adding some character to open spaces on minis. There are a lot of different and specific ways to paint freehand on a mini, so today I want to talk about painting hot-rod flames.

The first step is to get the outline of the flames right. I usually start out by painting the flames in white. As with all freehand, the simplest way to get the shapes right is to start out getting them close, then doing some clean up with the base color underneath.

Fire should always be brightest at its source, and get darker as it licks away from it, but for a hotrod flame you don't have to follow that rule. Since these flames are meant to look like designs or decals, they don't need to look like actual flames at all.

So, the next step I normally take is to take a strong red color and apply it to the base of every one of the flames. This is an ugly stage for the mini- it will be bright white with a stark red at the bottom.

The way to bring this all together is to apply a yellow ink or wash over the flame area. it will turn the red a little bit orange and start to bring the colors to a good medium.

Sometimes, that is where I leave it. Often the blend between the red and yellow doesn't need any more work. At other times, however, there needs to be an intermediate color.

I find it is easiest to do this is you work while the yellow ink is still wet. Take an orange (or a mix of red and yellow) and apply it over the area in between the two colors. If you do this while the ink is still wet, it will start to blend into the other colors with little effort (you can wet blend the two together, or just leave it and let it blend a little on its own).

Overall, this is a great way to break up the composition on large areas of a mini, or add some character to your veterans.

Ogryns

One of the things that I like painting the most are faces. I've already done a couple posts about painting human faces (separate ones for male faces or female ones and a third one just about eyes).

A lot of those techniques apply to fantasy and science fiction races also (and many can be applied for striking effect). Often, you have to look at the mini and decide whether using all of those techniques is right for it, or if you should only use some of them (or even none of them).

One race that seems fairly prevalent among miniatures is ogres. And the wonderful thing about ogre minis is that you can usually use every one of your human face techniques on them and the only difference is that you have more area to work with.

As an example, here are some Warhammer 40,000 Ogryn that I painted recently. The faces on these minis were very well sculpted, and I had a great time painting them up.

All of the normal human face details- 5 o'clock shadow and shaved head shadow, red under the eyes etc. -all add quite a bit of depth to these expressive faces.

As I mentioned before, I recently finished a commission for some Salamanders. I actually did two Land Raider Redeemers for the project- and I did my best to make them both match and each be unique.

The freehand especially is quite a bit different between the two. But anyway, here are some pictures:

I recently finished a commission for a full force of Salamander Space Marines, and I ended up with enough photos to start new Salamanders gallery.

First, though, I wanted to post just one of the land raiders- with a lot of close up shots. There was a good amount of free-hand and hazard striping that went into this mini, and I really wanted to share that.

Due to some popular demand, I have taken a photo of the free hand work I did on the Librarian's shoulder pad.

I thought that a female angelic figure would work pretty well as a Blood Angel decoration. Overall, the design was inspired by some freehand work Jen Haley did on a shoulder pad for the Emperor's Champion.

Mine isn't quite as detailed as Haley's, but it has the same basic structure to it.

Space Hulk Librarian

Here's something I finished recently: the librarian from Space Hulk. I've painted a few sets of Space Hulk minis, and eventually got my own copy of the game.

By the way, the game is actually a little better than I remember it from way back when. The new edition is pretty much the original game plus Deathwing, and a few tidbits here and there. I'm actually on the lookout for Genestealer and the old Space Hulk Compendium- it has rules for putting most 40k factions onto a drifting space hulk.

I already found the old rules for dancing space marines. I mean, If that level of obscurity is still to be found, I'm sure that the rest is somewhere.

So here is the first of my Space Hulk set painted. It will take me a while to get around to all of the others- really, I just have a lot to paint these days.




For those of you who are interested, I wasn't kidding about the dancing space marines. They were featured in an old issue of Dragon Magazine- from back when it wasn't run by Wizards of the Coast.

Honestly, I think both the concept and the artwork was Paranoia inspired.

Boy, those Ultramarines kick up a rug.

Bright Colors on Imperial Guard

I've been doing some imperial guard commissions lately- a lot of them are for a Praetorian force.

The strange thing about the Praetorian and Mordian regiments is that they don't look like other Imperial Guardsmen at all. Rather than wear the drab colors and camo patterns- inspired largely uniforms from both world wars and Rambo films, the Praetorians and Mordians wear dress uniforms to battle, with bright colors boldly displayed.

This shouldn't feel at all out of place in a universe where the Emperor's finest can call themselves "Rainbow Warriors" and be acceptable.

But despite the Grim Dark future being so populated with bright oranges and reds, it seems a little odd to paint the World War II inspired tank designs of the imperial guard that way. It is sometimes hard to imagine Imperial Guard vehicles in flashy coloring.

Of course, when they're painted, Guard vehicles look really good in the bright colors.