Status update after another week - COS #3

Another week comes to an end, so I thought it could be fitting to place a foot in the ground and see where I stand so far for this year.

I have not painted any minis yet, but I have built and primed a Great Unclean One for my Chaos forces, and I plan to start painting him in the near future. I will look at some Youtube videos first to see how people who know how to paint do it to get that nurgly and unclean skin. But I do have a general idea on how I want to do it.

For my Cities of Sigmar army I have finished building what I can on my knights. I have 8 Bretonnian Knights, 7 with lances and 1 with a banner assembled and ready for priming, and I also have 1 separate Knight Errant from a blister that I have given the trumpet to be the unit musician since he is the youngest of the knights. I have not attatched their shields yet as they will block off painting half of their bodies. So I plan to prime them separately and glue them on later in the process. I will also glue the knights to their mounts later in the process, so that I can paint knights and horses as good as possible. They will be joined by 1 more Knight who will be the leader, and that is the finecast model of The Green Knight, that will be the Black Knight in my army. He is a finecast model, but I have bought some more superglue now, so I am ready to assemble him next time I sit down with my minis.

I have also almost completed the assembly of a box of 2 battle wizards. The only thing that is missing is glueing the tip of the staff to their staffs and one of them is missing a hand.
Today these wizards comes in a box of 4 instead of 2 different boxes of 2.  But with so many extra parts in the box that came with 2 wizards there should not be any problem making 6 different wizards so I m thinking on getting a box of 4 at a later time.

I plan to build one unit of former Bretonnians then one unit of former Empire (that is now the current Cities of Sigmar range) and will more or less do that until all the Bretonnian units are built. When the Bretonnians are done I might start up again with my dwarfs.

The comming weekend I hope I can prime what I have assembled so far. If the weather permits I'll prime on Saturday and start to paint on Sunday. I still need to deside on the colorscheme for the army. I know I will use dark green and cream, but I am not sure if all the human units will be painted that way or if I will bring in a second or maybe even a third colorscheme for some of the units. I guess it depends on how good the green and creme looks...
The knights will be painted in separate colors and they will be bright. To tie them in to the rest of the army I plan to paint the shields on the horses barding in cream. 
The duardins will continue to be painted in the colors I have used so far, and that is green, blue and some brown.

One more unit assembled, COS#2

Like I wrote yesterday I have two boxes of the Empire General box. Yesterday I posted pictures of the General and his Standard bearer on foot, and today I finished gluing together the General and his Standard bearer on horseback. Because they were on horseback, I used the short banner pole that was provided in the set, and glued that to a pretty solid statue (well more likely it is the remains of a hero or an enemy). In his other hand the Standard bearer holds a big sword. I was planning to give him a handgun, but the only guns I had available was for the right hand, same as the standard, so I ended up with the sword. It's the same that my General on foot uses, but they will not be standing close to each other on the battlefield, so I don't think anyone will take notice. And if they do they probably will not have a reaction to it, as it is basically just a big sword. 
The General on horseback got a lance and a shield, and on the shield a bird has landed. I have crows or ravens on all my Sons of Behemat models, so maybe there can be some Sons of Behemat mercenaries in the army if the enemy is right. I love that idea, as it would give me yet another reason to finish that army.

I have also started assembling my first unit from the old Bretonnian range, the only box I have of knights. I would love to find more knights, but they are super expensive so I can't afford it unless I find someone who sells them dirt cheap.

I also have a knight errant blister, so I would like to build him so that he can be the standard bearer and the remaining eight knights can have lances and be ready to attack the enemies. I will see how this will look as soon as I get some superglue to glue the knight errant together as he is a metal mini. I probably need to replace his lance holding hand anyway as the metal lance is so bent I think it might break if I try to bend it back, and it also the arm looks very thin compared to the plastic arms.

I have glued all the horses together today, and tomorrow I plan to glue the plastic knights together as much as possible. I will not glue the knights to the hoses though, as I will prime and paint first to get the best result, and then just a drop or two of glue on their behinds to get them stuck to the saddle once painting is done.

I was trying to find a way to make one of the knights stand out as the leader, but then it hit me that I think I have one more knight, The Green Knight, and if so he will be a natural leader for the unit. I will look into this when I sit down to assemble plastic knights later today.

The first two units for my Cities of Sigmar army is assembled - COS #1

I've had a nice time this weekend putting together the first two units for my "New Year, New Army"-project, the Cities of Sigmar. The original plan was to build one, but as they needed a little time for the glue to set, I started on a second one as that happened.

The first unit is a unit of Freeguild Greatswords, they can be assembled with either straight or "special" sowrds, so I decided not to mix the different kind of swords, but to make different units instead. I have no idea how big the units should be, as the rulebook say that he unit has any number of models. So I am thinking that the units should be at least 20 strong, but I'll start with 10 and expand them after asking advice from the staff at Games Workshop.

I have not decided on what to do with names for the minis yet, but I am thinking that I need to name all the units, and then at least the command units and chracters. 

The pictures are not the best as the models are all gray, but I will take more detailed pictures showing off the different units as the project goes forward.

The first unit was made with the normal looking swords, and I gave them a captain/champion, a banner bearer and a musician. In this picture they are in the back row, as they were the first I asembled.

The second unit I made today was one of my Generals and his banner bearer. This set can be assembled with one model on horseback and one on foot so since I had two boxes I decided that both the General and the Banner Bearer will be either on foot or on hoseback. And this unit is the one on foot. This set is the old Empire General set, and is no longer in production.

The General is built strait from the box with a big sword ad a pistol. I thought his face looked a bit ike a young Clint Eastwood, so I named him General Clint Easterwood. You can't see it on the picture, but he has a cape too. I have not placed him on the base as I would like to be able to paint his back as well as the inside of the cape to a good standard and I think having him on the base will complicate that.

The trusted Standard Bearer is a mix of sets. The arms are from the Freeguild Greatswords set, and from that set I also took a sword in a tabbard and glued to his waist. The standard itself is from the general box, but there it is attached to a lance by the ribbon, but I decided it would look better if the standard was attatched to the figure, so I used my drill and made a hole to fit the banner pole into.

I also started to assemble the horses, nd one of the challenges here is that the old square cavalrybases had slots in them, but the new oval bases GW have upgraded to doesn't. That mean I have to cut slots in the bases to fit the horses. But the result is quite nice though.

 

I am not sure if I will do the same for my Knights as it seems those horses might have all four feet on the ground, so then it might be just as easy to just cut the "skis" off and glue them directly to the new bases. I will verify that all horses are made the same way before making the final decision.

I have also started to assemble the riders for the horses, but I will have to make them in two or three sittings, as there are so many parts that need to dry before I can attach the next.

So, I am back again

This last 6 months has been quite troublesome in my real life, with events including selling my house and moving by myself to a much smaller place. While we worked on selling the house there was not much time for building models, as the house needed to be readied for showing to potential buyers in a couple of hours sometimes. That meant no time to start to clean up a work desk and store away projects I was working on.

I have moved now, and yesterday I started up again, and that is quite fitting since it is the beginning of a new year. I built the body of a Great Unclean One, and after work today I plan to finish him by adding the head, his arms and some remaining details.

I have burned myself so many times by pledging what to do throughout a year, so I will not do that this year. But what I will do is to try and get a lot more painting and building done than earlier years. The last years I think the biggest setback has been doing the painting, because I have tons of models that are assembled and quite often primed, but not painted. And I do think I am better at building then I am at painting.

With that said, I still want to say a little about what I plan to be working on in the near future. I plan to finish the Great Unclean One today, then I can prime him outside as soon as the weather permits it and get him inside quick so the primer can dry in a good temperature. I don't know exactly how I want to paint him up, but I will look at some painting videos on Youtube and pictures, and see what I come up with.
I plan to use him for AoS, even though he can be used in Warhammer 40.000 as well, but for 40K my Chaos army is very themed around Chaos Space Marines, and the idea I have for that army in my head does not include Daemons. For AoS I have some things painted up but not much. Of the things that I need to compare the Great Unclean One with is a unit of Nurgle Plague Drones, but they don't need to look alike as they are quite different, and a partially painted Beast of Nurgle, but I might prime that again and start over if I find a good way to paint the Great Unclean One that differs from what I have done with the Beast. I also have  another big model, sort of Bloab Rotspawned-thingy (think I made a mix between Bloab and one of the others) but I don't think I ever got around to painting it, so I need to find that in one of my many boxes at a later time and paint that sort of the same way.

I have also brought home my Bretonnian models that I never have gotten around to build or paint, and I plan to use them for my New Year New Army (NYNA) project for 2022. 
NYNA to me will not be done in the time schedule that Games Workshop have in their official event, but I would like to see if I can build an army thought out the year, and who knows, maybe that could be an Armies on parade entry come October/November? If I am to compete this year it should be an AoS themed board as the last time I participated (and got 3rd place) I used a 40K Ork setup.
I am not sure how I would field a Cities of Sigmar army, but while trying to sleep last night I thought of a way I could field a Gloomspite Gitz army with some giants in the middle of the board, lots of Goblins and Squigs on one side, and something else on the other side (Trolls maybe).

I will see what I have painted up when the time gets nearer and what I can field. I have ordered some Cities of Sigmar units from the current range, and I expect I might get them this weekend or next at the latest.

I plan to start painting Goblins on Squigs (mostly Boingrot Bounderz I believe) in the near future, as I have quite a lot of them primed here at my apartment. I also have lots of unbuilt at a storage unit not too far away when I have painted what I have built so far (if I ever get that far) as I brought with me all my Goblin stuff back home from storage at my cabin. There are also some trolls in the group I have at home that I would like to paint up as soon as possible.

The last thing I have a plan for working on (painting and repairing)are the old Warhammer scenery that I started to build last year. All my sets are built and primed now, and some of the sets have started to be painted while others are just primed. But some of them got damaged in the move, so I need to do some repairs as well as painting.

 And as I wrote that last section I remembered that there are one more big thing I would like to paint, and that's my Giants (Sons of Behemat as they are called now). I finished one regular giant and one big one before everything stopped when we put the house up for sale. But the rest of that army is primed and just waiting to be painted. I believe there are one big giant and if I am not mistaken five regular giants to paint. Might be more regular giants too, I am not completely sure right now. I love seeing those big models come to life, and although I am not 100% happy with the ones I have painted, I am happy enough that I will proudly present them as part of an army, either in a Sons of Behemat army or as mercenaries in the Gloomspite Gitz army.

Well, that is all for now. Hopefully I will get in to a good, steady rhythm of building and painting, so I will have things to post here on a regular basis this year.