The Sylaneth army is slowly growing

 The Sylvaneth army is slowly growing again.

I have assembled my Ylthari's guardians box with Ylthari and three guardians, and they will work as one unit in my army as they have special rules for hust these four minis. I've also assembled two boxes (five minis in each) of the Tree Revenants that will work as one unit with full command. I have painted up a regular Dryad in the color I want to use for the spirits, and have tried two different colors of washes on it to decie what to use on the minis. I am quite happy with the green now, so the next step is to paint some of it with the color I use for bark, and then a branch will be painted with the yellowish brown I use for young woood as I plan to use that for the hair of my Tree Revenants. I am sure the bark paint will work with the green, but not hundred percent shure the yellowish brown will. But I have to try it to make sure, and if it doesn't work I need to go back to the worktable and think out something else that can look either magical or like wood.

I'm not sure if I mentioned it in the blog before, but the final (for now) three Kurnoth hunters are just waiting to be primed. This gives me a legal unit with swords and a legal unit with schythes. They will grow to six figures in each unit with time, and I might add more units with bows and swords but I think I will keep the Scythes to one unit of six. It's not that they are bad models, it's just that I feel I need more ranged weapons and swords work better with Duardin blacksmiths than schythes do in my humble opinion.

The original Treelord Ancient is built and ready to be primed. He will be the only Treeord Ancient built from the riginal kit, then I have the short but stubby tree from Blood Bowl and I also just got my Treebeard model rom Lord of the Rings in the house.
The Treebeard model was a lot smaller than I had expected, but the parts look great so I am sure it will look amazing. One of the ideas I had thought about was replacing a Hafling with a Duardin, but that will not look good when Treebeard himself is the size he is. So I will build him without anyone ridng on him.
Because the Blood Bowl tree is so short I would love to raise the base to get some elevation and I will see if I can do this with rocks, building up a rock pile, and maybe I will use some cork in the middle to get the right size. I will do some experimenting with the rocks I have and see what I can come up with. The main reason for making sort of a rock pile is to save on the technical paint as I spent way too much on the base of my Sons of Behemat general that I only built with cork.

The final mini I have built for this army is Druanti the Arch-Revenant. This is the only miniature in the range that has wings and can fly. I am not entirely sure how I will paint this up either, but I'm figuring a mix between the regular Dryads and the Tree Reveants, with more green in the bark than the other trees.

What remains to build now is Treebeard and my final Treelord that will be a young lord, then I have built all the minis I currently own, but ths army will grow with time but I don't think I will buy more before what I have now is painted.

So, what is going on now?

It has been a long time without a proper update again, even in this ties of Covi-19 I don't seem to get the hang of regulat painting sessions and updates even though I did ok on the models work and paint for a while.

Games Workshop teased a great looking Sylvaneth Tree Revenant comming out somtime in the future, playing some sort of "flute of life" and transporting some soldpods (if I am not mistaken). So since I want that miniature in my army I need to add some other Tree Revanents in the army too.

So far I have bought and built a unit of 10 Tree Revenants with command, and I plan to make that the standard unit size as a unit can be from 5 to 30. By makingthe units any bigger it will take too many miniatures to make the amount of units that I need.
I have also ordered a box of Ylthati's Guardians, a unit of 4 Tree Revenants that really is a unit from Warhammer Underworlds but the unit is also a legal unit for Age of Sigmar. They should be in store waiting for me, along with Treebeard from the Lord of the Rings range.

I have been working with asembling some units for my Gloompite Gitz army. The first unit is a unit that doesn't seem to be an official unit anymore unfortionately, the Gnarly Cavesquigs. I hope I have another unit of these in storage as they ar the best looking Cave squigs ever made and 10 squigs is enough for one unit. If I doesn't have anymore I will blend them in to an existing unit just to get them on the table.

The oher unit I hve been woking with is not relly a single unit, but a single set from Forgeworld. 

 It is called The Night Goblin Command Set and consist of one shaman doing some heavy stuff, one standard bearer with a big stick with two banners on, and a grot riding a giant squig with a lot of armor on it. They all looks great, but I think I need to use them as separate figures or in other units. I will probably use the Standard berer as the standard bearer for the Goblin King or his highest ranking General. The goblin on a giant cave squig I am sure I can field alongside some of the others I have, I will have to check the rules to see how many there can be in a unit, and the Shaman is probably a sngle figure anyway.

Aslo I have been able to paint some skin on a couple more of my Sons of Behemat gargants. I am trying out a couple of different skintones as I like some variety. The Bugmans Glow got to be very dark pink when used on the white primer, so I am exited to see how it will look after a wash and drybrush. I will keep using Kislev Flesh on the original bothers and my other Mega Gargant, and I will also use Cadian Fleshtone on some of them.

There hasn't been many updates lately, but that is not because of lack of projects. It is more the lack of being able to finish what I start.

Since the last update Games Workshop have changed the setup of my Sylvaneth Army. The way they have done this is by teasing an upcomming release of a Tree revenant playing a sort of "flute of life".
I want to have that model in my army, but I can't have only one Tree Revenant as that would look very weird. So even though I originally planned on only having trees I am now going to get myself some boxes of Tree Revenants to add to the army. I still will have a majority of plain trees of all sorts, but I will have a few units of Tree Revenants. Exactly how many it will be, time will show.

I have also decided after reading about the Ironbark clan that I ned more Kurnough Hunters. The idea now is to expand all units from tree to six strong. I will also need one or two more units with swords, so that mean I will need several boxes, but I will do it a little over time. 
I have also decided I will get the Threebeard figure from Lord of the Rings to add to the army as a Treelord Ancient. I had planned to get the regular Ents as well, but I think they will stand out too much so I have decided (well, almost decided at least) to leave them out of the army.
At the moment I am working on glueing together the last three Kurnough Hunters that I have in the house, to complete the units with swords and scythes. This gives me one legal unit of each type. Then as I wrote above each unit will expand in size at a later time. I will also assembe the last two Treelords so I can prime and paint them. I will make one as a Treelord and one as an Ancient.

For Warhammer 40K I have started to paint up my captains for my Deathwatch army. They have been standing on my desk with their capes done for a long time, and I figure I need to get some work done on this army as it is all assembled and primed black. So far I have done the faces and the weapon casisngs for my 6 captains, but I plan to keep working on them  a little at the time until I can call them done. I also intend to take a trip to Games Workshop in the near future, as they hav reopened after being closed due to Covid-restrictions in Oslo. If the store is not too crowded when I m there I will ask for tips on how to re-create the blue glaze that is out of production now. I would very much like to use that on the bases both for Deathwatch and Kharadron Overlords from AoS so I need to use something that is available now. I am thinking that I might be able to use a blue contrast paint thinned with the Lamian medium made for the Contrast range. But I will hear if they have any better ideas.

I also have some Ork models standing on my desk that I would like to paint up. I have the dinosaur gun-platform that I need to prime and paint but I have not decided on what color to use yet so I might just prime it and leave it on the shelf until I decide. 
The Wazbom Blastajet I primed black and will be painted black, so I think that is the unit that will be finished first. I will have to cover everything in a thin layer of black paint so that I can cover up any mistakes as the paint from the pot and the primer has a different shine to it, and then there are a lot of different details to paint. Still I don't think it is too many different colors. I am thinking that I will use two metal colors (one copper and one plain metal) and then sme tubes will need red paint, and the pilot needs several colors. But I think that will mostly be it.
The last unit is the new Haza Hoff. I have actually re-written my fluff to explain how Ghazghkull Thraka can be in two different armies with two different names, and I think I have come up with an explanation that will work well both for the real Ghazhgkull and for my warboss. It will need several colors and has a lot of details so I will take my time to make sure I paint him as a centerpiece. He is not the biggest model in my army, but he is perhaps the most important and a lot of people will probably look at him if I field him. 

I have just finished going through the entire blog, I have fixed several spelling mistakes and fixed the label tags for every post.
It was quite interesting to read through everything I had written and see when I talked about doing things for the first time and how long it takes to get things done.
I have a few examples that stands out that I would like to mention:

- Blimp for the Dwarfs: This was first mentioned in a blog post way back in Novermber 2010 where I talked about building a Dwarf Airforce. This was many years before we got Kharadron Overords who are sky-travelling Dwarfs, and the only flying Dwarfs was a Gyrocopter set. And one of the things I talked about for this Airforce was to make a blimp. It took 3 years before I named the bimp the Badyear Blimp (pun on Goodyear). It is still just a few pieces here and there... The Airforce got a Gyrobomber for Armies on Parade in 2017, but that is all they have at the moment. I still have plans both for a blimp and for balloons,

- Building of towers: Back in January 2011 I said I would have several towers finished before the year was over. They are all built now, and I have started painting them. So maybe they will be done by the end of 2021 as sort of a 10-year aniversary.

- In 2014 I talked about my scary forest, and that is as good as done now. Only thing missing is to paint the rim of the base and that will be done as soon as I have cleaned up my desk a little so I have room to put it on the paper covers while painting. This mean I have to paint leaves on about 12 Sylvaneth Dryads first,

- In August 2015 I talked about having gotten some trees. Back then I think they were still part of the Wood Elf range, but now they are known as Sylvaneth and is their own standing army. These trees are some of the ones I am working on now... Some of them have been painted up before, but then they were primed again with a light primer when I decided to use Contrast paint on my trees. It is still the same minis that are released today, and the same sprues.

Army size Warhammer 40.000

In the last blogpost we sized up the armies for Age of Sigmar (formerly known as Warhammer Fantasy). I had planned to put everything in one post, but there was so much to write that the post would be too long. So I split it up, and without any more smalltalk let us take a look at the Warhammer 40.000 armies and say a little bit about how I see the armies coming out in the end. As with the Age of Sigmar post we will go from smallest to largest, and we'll start with four separate armies that are so small they probably will end as warbands or mashed together as one army.

The smallest of the four is my Sisters of Silence. There are just two units made for this army, so it is really hard to make this in to an army of their own. My idea is to use the Sisters as an addon for Deathwatch, Space Marines or use them in a bigger army of the Inquisition.

Then I have the Inquisitors and their retinues. They can be used by themselves, but like with the Sisters of Silence they will not make an army with that many points. But the thing with Inquisitors is that they can request support from the units they want, so they can get Deathwatch, Astra militarum, Space Marines or combinations to fight with them .I have some Inquiitors, some of their retinues, and some Grey Knights that will make the basis of this army.

The Adeptus Custodes might have enough points to be a small army by themselves. They are the protectors of the Emperor, but after the great rift happened some of them have fought on other planets lone or beside other Space maine chapters. 

One army that quite probably will evolve in to something bigger is the Siters of Battle. I have alays said that I would like to have an army of them when they came as plastic minis, and we are there now. So far they are just a warband, but I am not sure what this will end up as. It will not be a huge army, but it might be an army on its own. Games Workshop keep pushing out nice models for this range so I know it will grow...

Now lets move in to what is full armies. And first out, just as with the Age of Sigmar (Fantasy) is the army with the biggest models. The Imperial Knights. I am not really sure how many models I will end up with for this army, but it will probably be a little more than the Sons of Behemat. I will have three sizes of knights, and they will work as a separate army or as backup for other Imperial armies.

The next army when it comes to the number of minis is my Genestealer cult. They will have a variety of models, and will come both from the Planetary Defence Force and the mines on the planet where they are. It will be mostly infantry, but they will also have a few Leman Russ tanks and Chimera troop transports as well as mining vehicles (these are great looking minis) and bikes.

Then we have the Adeptus Mechanicus. This will be a nice size army, but nothing too big. They will be a varied force with Skitarii as the basic troops but they will have lots of different support elements. This will certainly be a stand alone army of a certain size, and if they ned to they can call in the Knights for support.

The two next armies will probably be about the same size, but some has to go first, so I will put the Chaos Space Marines first. They will have two Knights fighting along side them, but apart from that most of the army will be infantry. They are really two different Chaos armies from the same chapter so I can either split them up if I want to have a Nurgle army or a classic Chaos Space Marine army and run them with just that rulebook, or I can run them togther as one big army. I am planning on using them as one army as much as I can. I have some old models in this army, but I do believe they are all legal still, as well as newer units especially in the Nurgle part of the army.

Then we have the Necrons. They are my own dynasty, and all units are units that are available in the current range as I started collecting them not too long ago. I don't have all the models for this army yet, but they come in a little at a time. Some of the units are ready to be based, but there is still lots of the army on the sprues. This is probably the army that use the fewest colors as the base for everything is metal. Then I have two contrast paints that I use to get some colors on to the metal.

The one that just didn't make it to the top three is my Deathwatch army. It is all built and 95% of it is primed, but I need to paint it up. Only unit that is painted is my test model who also is my Watch Master. I have one final unit that isn't primed and that is some Primaris Space Wolves. I need to find a primaris upgrade kit for them as I want to have shoulderguards with printed chapter inignia on them, but that is hard to find. I look for it every time I am at the Games Workshop store, but haven't seen it yet. Next time I go I might just order them online.

The third biggest army is my Orks. This is the army made for doing conversion work as well as just  having fun with it. I am currently building several units for this army, and writing their backstory. I have lots of units for this army in my storage that I can't reach because of Covid-19 restrictons, but there are plenty to work with at home as well. I still buy units for this army from time to time as I get conversion ideas or if I find I would like to have more of a certain unit. This is the army I go to when I want to havesome fun.

The second biggest army is the Gatekeepers Space Marines. My original idea was to make an entire chapter, 1000 Marines strong with all the support elements that go with it, but I don't think the army will be that big as Games Workshop started to fase out the original Marines and replace them with Primaris Marines. I am not the biggest fan of Primaris, even though they do have some nice models so I plan to have about one company of Primaris but who knows maybe there will be more in the end.

The biggest army is the Astra Militarum, or as I like to call them the Imperial Guard. I love tanks, so this army has a lot, also artillery and troop transports. I use all kinds of infantry in the army. Cadians are my main force so far, as they are the easiest minis to get a hold of, but there is also quite a lot of Catachans with Tempestus Scions a little rarer in the mix. I love Ogryns and Bullgryns, so I have a whole lot of them. I think I could field an entire army just with them if that is legal. I know it is legal to have an all tank army so I can certainly field that, but what I like most is to field a good mix of everything.
This will probaly not be an army that I will ever call finished, but when I get to a certain point I will only add more units if Games Workshop releses something brand new that I feel I need to have. But for now I am adding units, especially infantry, when I don't buy too much else from Games Worshop as I am short on Infantry units. Like many of my other armies this is also in every state from finished to still on sprues, and I have a lot primed, especially tanks and other vehicles. 

Army size Age of Sigmar (Fantasy)

I thought I would use this blogpost to size up my armies for Age of Sigmar and Warhammer 40.000 and say a little bit about how I see the armies coming out in the end. This blogpost will be so long that I will split it in two posts.

I will go from smallest to largest for both systems, and we will start with Age og Sigmar (Fantasy):

Sons of Behemat is the army with the biggest figures, but also the army with the fewest figures. This army has just 11 figures (can't get myself to call them minis). These 11 makes this army about 2400-2500 points, so this is a full army as it is. Still I liked building the Gargants, so I am not saying that there won't be more in the future, but even if I double the amount of figures it would still be the smallest army when it comes to figure-count. This is the only AoS army where all the figures are assembled and primed. I have 2 of the 11 figures painted up, so the army is about 10% done.

The next army in size is my Ogor Mawtribes. I used to think the Ogors were quite large minis, but after working with the Sons of Behemat they are rather small compared to them. Still, they are bigger than most other minis. The Ogors are great figures, and I have 1 unit painted up and 1 unit partially built, the rest are still on their sprues. I do have quite a lot of minis for the army, so it is really a matter of assembling, priming and painting. One of the next things I am going to get built is actually the only scenery model for this army and it is called a Great Mawpot. When I can get to my miniature storage room (unable because of Covid-19 restrictions at the moment) I plan to bring some of the boxes home so I can start to assemble some of them as they are great minis. This is one army where I will step away from my base rules, as they come from the mountains of the North I will add snow to their bases. Some will have all snow bases (the finished unit do have this) and some will just have patches of snow. I haven't really decided if I should use grey rock bases or brown mud bases where I don't have snow. I might do a little of both.

The army on third smallest is probably something that will shock some who have read this blog for some time. It is actually my "legal" Duardin army, at the moment called The Dispossessed. The Duardins I have that are legal but can't be used for the Dispossessed  can be used for cities of Sigmar together with my Bretonnians that can count as Empire models and I think as an army they will be about the same size as my Dispossessed. 

Then we have the steampunk dwarfs, the Kharadron Overlords. They are an army I hope to spend a lot of time with pretty soon, as I am very fond of them. At the moment I have 1 unit (the smallest ship) painted up, but I need to do the base an I also need to glue the globe to the ship. I laso have a test model for the infantry pinted, but I might change the colors on him yet... This will be a fairly sizeable army as I love the ships and a lot of the units in this army. I had originally planned for them to have bases that looked a bit like clouds or sky, but one of the main ingrediencies for making these bases has gone out of production, so I need to see if I can find a replacement for that component. If not I will think up something fitting, and then it would probably be the grey rock base of the duardins or something to match the decks of the ships. I will have to check up with the Games Workshop staff and listen to their advice if I can make the bases I originally intended. I will paint up models first and when I have some units done I can start to think about the bases.

The third biggest army is probably the Sylvaneth. I have a handful of Treelords from the original range, and I will add Treebeard from the Lord of the Rings range, and I might add the other Ent model as well. Then I have the low but wide tree from the Bloodbowl range that will be a druid, and lots of regular trees. I also have several of the old woods that work as scenery for this range. I have painted some of this army, and I have several primed minis waithing to get their bark and leaves painted. And still there are a lot on sprues.

The second biggest army for AoS is the Chaos forces. If you break them down by Chaos Gods then some of them will be rather small, but I like to look at everything Chaos as one big army as it was intended before Age of Sigmar split it up in to factions, and then it is quite a big army. I have forces for Blades of Khorn, Hedonites of Slaanesh and Maggotkin of Nurgle and also what used to be called Chaos Unlimited but they go by the name of Slaves to Darkness now.
When I get all these forces together the Chaos army is my second largest army. I have some really old metal models for this army, but most of those are still legal to field even though they might not be the newest versions out there and they might not be characters anymore but they are still legal to field.
I also have some chaos deamons that I can field along side this army.

The biggest Age of Sigmar army is the Gloomspite Gitz. This might also be the most varied army I have, and like Chaos it can be split up in to separte smaller armies fr smaler games. I can use my Trolls as an army of their own, and I can also do that with my squig units, or I can use everything as one big army as I plan to do most of the time. I still have some units I want to get for this army, but I have tons of models for this model in storage and also some in all stages from being still on sprues to being painted. I also have some older models that I have based on bases filled with turf, and I plan to take them home from storage and do their bases again in the new style. I have plenty of spare bases, so that is no probem.
Like the Chaos army there are all kinds of models here from old metal models through resin to several generations of plastic models. There are even some Forgeworld models in the mix.

I also have a large Dwarf army, and I guess they are about the same size as the Chaos force or maybe just a little smaller. But this army is not legal for the Age of Sigmar edition we have now so I am not counting them officially in this setting. Still I want to build and paint all the models, and the ones I bought that were already painted I intend to re-paint to get them to fit with my army even though they are painted quite well. Maybe I can play the old Warhammer Fantasy game, I know some people still do. But even if I don't play them they will still be a great looking army and I love Dwarf models as the old ones have so much character. I have lots of painted Dwarfs but lots still on sprues.

More orks

So far these last few weeks, I have finished building quite a lot of Orks. I have the Stegadon walker that I have showed off. This is just waiting for me to find a box with a battlewagon, either in my storage when I am allowed to go there (Covid-19 restrictions) or when Games Workshop Oslo opens again (closed at least two more weeks due to Covid-19 restrictions) so that I can get an Ork gunner. I have plans to get a couple more Battlewagons in the army anyway, and one of them will be a Gunwagon with the main gun from a Stompa, so that will not need its gunners.

I have also finished a Wasbom Blastajet, a unit of 11 Boyz,  a unit of 5 Nobz, Ghazghull Thraka and his Grot banner bearer, a unit of 3 Meganobz, a start collecting box from Age of Sigmar that will give my army a unit of 10 Bad Moon boyz, 1 weirdboy and a unit of 3 Bikers that has replaced their bikes with Gore Grunta beasts.

And today I plan to build a Rukkatrukk Squigbuggy and maybe also a Boomdakka Snazzwagon. Then I will prime some of the Orks I have built so that they can get their paint later. And if my hands don't shake too much today I might start to paint more of my Gargants for my Sons of Behamat AoS army.

Then next for the Orks there will be the remians of the old bord game that was released some yers ago (think it was called Speedfreaks?) and that is one wehicle and at least 3 bikers (maybe even 6). I have built the Shokkjump Dragsta and almost finished painting it, so I am thinking the remaining vehicle might be a Kustom Boosta-blasta (at least I hope it is as I am currently missing that in the army).