Gnarly-quins

To Ynnari... or remain Harlequins ?

This Is Why I Hobby

What a week... today I show you what I worked on to distract from real life.

July WIP

Look, Joe's paints aren't all dried up!

Back in the Saddle

Sooo, it's been awhile! Here's just a little bit of what I've been up to and currently working on.

Harlequin Voidweaver Details!

Voidweaver rules!

2015, Necrons, and Harlequins!

Almost a month in to 2015 already, time sure does fly. We've got 2 updates right around the corner, both are factions I collect / play and am looking forward to adding to each army. I've also got some additional goals I want to lay out for the new year.

March Updates

Lately, I've been working on a few different projects spread across all 3 of my armies. Now that my Land Raider Crusader has been properly magnetized, I've started on painting some of the details. I've still got a ways to go, but above is a shot of the internal control center of the tank. I've also applied the base colors to the exterior. Still weighing wether or not to try a checkered pattern over the white area or simply go with Raven Guard iconography:

I know I said Necrons were next, but I lied. I am still working on painting the first Warrior squad and their bases are almost finished, I just ended up trying a second version of the paint scheme in an attempt to speed up the process. I know I'm going with the blue, metal, black colors, I'm just mulling over a few minor details before I batch paint the remaining 15 models.

While I was deliberating, I thought to myself why not finish assembling my Harlequin troop for my Dark Eldar army. So I did, and it was a pleasure working with these fine metal figures after going through the brittle Wrack squad. I now have all 8 finished, including a Death Jester, Shadowseer, Troop Master, and 2 with fusion pistols. Running the entire unit, all with Kiss upgrades, clocks in at 252 I believe but packs a mean punch. I will certainly be testing this squad in my first few games with Dark Eldar and more often than not they will serve as a delivery method for the first Webway Portal touting haemonculus. Speaking of which, here's a couple old school models that are ready to prime:

I also finally managed to finish assembling my Archon and Lilith models. Haven't made a list yet that uses Lilith, but either way she'll make a fine Succubus or Hekatrix; what a fantastic model.

You also probably noticed by now that I made some changes to the blog. I really liked blogger's new dynamic views when they first came out, but it wasn't until recently that you could add sidebar widgets so I thought I would give it a shot. They still don't offer a feature for custom widgets or even a basic blogroll, but I trust they'll have solutions for those coming out soon. In the meantime, it's been kinda fun trying out the different views and ways to display content. I especially like the Flipcard view sorted by Date as a nice visual alternative to the blog archive. I realize these templates are not at all tablet friendly so I've added a link to the mobile version of the site on the top bar. I'll still probably make small tweaks here and there as I test things out, but if you're not viewing from a real computer (sorry iPad) I suggest going with the mobile template for the time being.

Citadel Finecast

Last Saturday, I managed to pick up a couple of the new Citadel Finecast models; a Harlequin Shadowseer and Harlequin Death Jester.

With these two models I'm able to finish off my Harlequin Troupe, the latest addition to my Dark Eldar army. I tried to get these a couple of weeks ago when I ordered the Troupe box set (ahead of the price increase and switch to resin) in hopes of snagging some of the last metal miniatures from GW, but these two were already sold out. It's all good though because now I have a nice comparison between the old metal and new resin harlies.

The good news is that Finecast is better than what I was expecting - I thought it would be exactly like Forge World resin which can be prone to some extreme mold lines and loss of detail when extra material unfortunately seeps into the wrong parts of the mold (the quality of the production process just isn't as high with FW as it is with other/newer GW lines, at least from what I've seen). I still need to finish a few things before posting the rest of my FW order from a couple months ago. I finally picked up some much needed tools over the weekend that should make working with resin models much easier. More on those later.

Anyway, back to the Harlequins. The new Finecast models can be assembled pretty quickly. There may be slightly more cleanup required with the back of the hobby knife depending on the mold/model, but everything glues together faster than metal. The downside is this stuff is fragile! The top of my Shadowseer's staff seemed a little bent/loose on the spru, and sure enough after I cut it off and started to clean around the edges the skull fell off. Nothing a little greenstuff can't fix, but have to remember to be really careful with the thin pieces; they can't withstand any flexing to and fro and have very little give. On larger pieces/models I don't see this being an issue, just the small ones that are attached to the spru edges you have to watch for.

All in all, I'm impressed with the level of detail they can achieve with the new material. I'll have more as I start to paint these guys and also as I finish up the metal Harlequin counterparts and remaining FW models. I'm very happy to finally be working on a squad of Harlequins - these are the models that had just been redone when I started getting back into the hobby a few years ago from a long hiatus. No one put it better than my wife who, after several rounds of drinks at a nearby Chili's drunkenly blurted out to the guy working that night at the now closed GW store, "these new Harlequins are off the chain!!!"

Wow, that was 4 years ago!

I think he thought she was mocking him and the new minis, but she wasn't. I looked up and smiled and said "Yes, yes they are." :-)