Red Army\'s Sin Dorei

[redarmy27]

CMON\'ers! It\'s time for another army!!

Getting the chance to play and paint Daemons of Chaos was very fun and it gave me a chance to experience an entire different kind of army layout. Having been at it though with Daemons, I wanted something different to paint and play so I read around and started army shopping. After reading the lore behind the High Elves, I was immediately drawn to making High Elves my new army.

Though entirely different than Daemons (and not nearly as evil or remotely possessed), I think this will be a very fun army to paint as well as play. There will be a lot of metallics, which I\'m not too fond of, in this army (which I’m wondering if this would be my chance to go to NMM for the entire army) and I’m strongly considering getting GW’s metals since, while good paints, P3’s aren’t cutting it. This will be a good way for me to learn more about painting with metallics; it\'ll be interesting since it\'s not a strong point of mine.

So here we are! My theme for these guys will be Blood Elves from World of Warcraft, so this will be my shot at it.

So far, I got started on my White Lions. I have a total of five so far, yes, a small force, but it’ll grow. I have the entire High Elf Army set on the way from GW as we speak. I need to get my color scheme and techniques down quick before they arrive….

The White Lions only have basecoats on them so far, nothing big, but it’s a start. As always, comments and constructive criticism are always appreciated.

Here be White Lions:

Cheers and happy painting!

Jake

 

[Zerak86]

Its great! Looks like a really nice basecoat on all of them, looking forward on seeing some more

 

[JesterzUSMC]

I like P3\'s for some of the smooth looking surfaces, but I agree about GW Metallics.

Great colour scheme BTW.

Can\'t wait to see it on a unit.

 

[redarmy27]

This is Madness! No! It\'s Warhammer!

And so it starts! I went to check some mail for my office and low and behold a package slip graced my university inbox. Like a giddy school child I turned my slip in and pranced back to my office to open the box and look at my soon-to- be army.

It’s not too much work….

It’s only 33 sprue palettes!

So, I have my work cut out for me. Here’s what I’m up against:

Tonight will be “clipping night”. If you’re bored come and join me

Jake

 

[redarmy27]

Clip, clip, clip, clip...

After 3 hours of clipping at my front desk job, I got all of the pieces off the sprues. Now I\'m going through and assembling everyone at the same time while getting mold lines off the best that I can. I\'ve already separated everything into separate sections in my sorter trays: legs in one cubicle, torsos in another, and so on.

I probably won\'t be painting anytime soon until I get all of my guys put together, which shouldn\'t take too long. I know that if I stopped putting them together and went to painting only a handful, I\'d never get finished.

I hope to get the most of them assembled by the end of the weekend.

Jake

 

[redarmy27]

I\'m anxious to paint, so I\'ll be speeding up the building process considerably once I figure out how I want to pose the units.

For the spearmen, I\'ll have the front row kneeling and bracing for a charge, with the second row hold their spears over the shoulders of the first row. The rear will have the spears nearly draw as well. I think it\'ll look sharp, but I\'ll need to get the positioning right.

I do have a good idea for the sword masters, but it\'ll take some converting, which I\'m pretty green at. I was thinking of making my Sword Masters into Spellbreakers. Spellbreakers are the BAMF\'s of the Blood Elves. They\'re lightning quick and are fast at using their weapons.

Here\'s a Spellbreaker:

I was thinking of taking a unit of spearmen and taking the spearheads off and somehow making them into the two-bladed swords of theirs. As for their heads, I\'ll have to look around for appropriate heads or something. I think it\'d be a really cool thing if I pulled it off. Also for the shields, I could either find one like that shape or actually take a normal one and just carve the hole in it. I\'ll find a way.

Jake

 

[redarmy27]

And now onto assembly

And so, the madness continues.

I figured out a way to make the Spell-breaker weapons; a buddy of mine gave me a few sprues of the blackguard weapons so I\'ll do some converting on that to make the double-bladed swords.

I started some building last night. I couldn\'t resist the mage model I have so I quickly built him up.

I have to find a way to fill in the cracks that didn\'t line up between the \"plume\" and his robe. I tried to fit the damn thing the best that I could with no avail. Oh well, that\'s what green stuff is for I guess.

Next I went on to do some spearmen tonight while taking a break from a research paper I\'m doing. I saw some other people do the kneeling pose from the archers and I decided to give it a whirl. I think it\'ll look impressive when they\'re all together in a unit.

It\'s so much easier building now that I don\'t have to worry about mold lines considering I got the majority of them as I was getting pieces off sprues.

Anyways, back to my research project.

Jake

 

[redarmy27]

Well it’s safe to say that I’ll be painting as of this weekend as my force is nearly done being assembled. Today I picked up 8 more Silver Helms which I will be using as my Dragon Princes, or in the sake of my army Blood Knights. I do like the Dragon Prince models, but they’re too “loud” for the sake of my army. Aside from that reason, Silver Helms are much cheaper to buy.

All in all, here’s what I’ve built:
White Lion Chariot
24 Spearmen, full command running at a 6X4 formation. This will act as my anvil; it could always be split too.
2 RBT’s
1 Mage
1 Archmage Mounted
5 White Lions

To be completed:
32 Archers
16 Silver Helms. These will be used as Dragon Princes, so I’ll have 3 units of 6.

It’s going to be a very fast moving, hard hitting army that will capitalize in the charges of my Blood Knights with my infantry moving up the middle for a pinch move. It should be very fun to do.

Now for some pictures:

As always, comments and criticisms are appreciated.

Jake

 

[redarmy27]

Well I\'ve finally started painting, but the progress will be slow for a bit since I\'ll be graduating from college here shortly.

Here\'s what I have so far. I\'m far from done with this guy:

I\'ve come to the conclusion that I hate painting with \"real\" metallics. I hate them. I can never get them to do what I want them to do so I\'m going to charge forward and go with NMM. I\'m not sure how I\'ll fair with it, but it\'ll be a learning experience. I\'m just sick of using metallic paint and getting poor results.

As always, C&C are appreciated.

Jake

 

[redarmy27]

Anyways, as I am now on strike from \"real\" metallics, I had my first go at NMM. I mainly practiced on the trim of the robe tonight. Here we go:

Let me know what you think. I\'ll get to the other pieces tomorrow night. I have a ways to go on this guy as he\'s a centerpiece so I want him to look nice.

Jake

 

[Thomgirl]

Looking good and clean so far. I like your color choice thus far keep it up

 

[Jericho]

Congrats on graduating! I finished my Bachelor of Arts this year as well :beer:

Anyway my biggest suggestion would be to use the fiery/smoky swirly things as blue/white instead of green. The green clashes a bit with the red cloak. Balancing those two colors in a single scheme is a nightmare.

 

[redarmy27]

Originally posted by Jericho
Congrats on graduating! I finished my Bachelor of Arts this year as well :beer:

Anyway my biggest suggestion would be to use the fiery/smoky swirly things as blue/white instead of green. The green clashes a bit with the red cloak. Balancing those two colors in a single scheme is a nightmare.

And congrats to you as well! I\'ll be completely done with tests on Thursday and I\'ll give a final presentation on Monday. Then I\'ll \"walk\" on the 23rd.

That\'s a very good idea for the sword and plume. I didn\'t like it much the way I did it, and was considering a different color, and blue will do it!

I\'m thinking about stripping and restarting this guy as I\'m seeing that the conditions that the primer made contact with the model isn\'t doing too well. I\'m not sure, but I\'ll keep examining it. Oh well, it\'s not like I can\'t just start over and fresh with him!

I\'ll be picking up some Vallejo Airbrush Metallics this weekend to give metallics a try. Thanks Dragonsreach!

Jake

 

[redarmy27]

So it\'s been almost a month since I\'ve had a brush in my hand. I\'ve been thrown back into the hobby by some random painting urges and it\'s not pretty.

Here\'s what I caught myself working on until 4:45 this morning. A bit crude, but I\'m getting my rhythm back. I\'m not too fond of the the way the colors are with the black primer so I may go back to white on the other guys.

As always, C&C are appreciated.


Jake

 

[redarmy27]

Well I made a little bit of progress today. I started painting my prince/noble model in the style of my Blood Elves army. I\'m liking using the white primer much more and I have to say my metallics look much better this time around. Aside from painting, I\'m also making movement trays for these guys in advance. It makes playing that much easier. Later on, I plan on making the trays magnetic with the models themselves; this means easy storage!

Jake

 

[mattsterbenz]

looking good Jake. The metals are coming out great. I really like the scale mail on the horse\'s barding.

Keep it up!

-Matt

 

[redarmy27]

Thanks Matt!

I had a migraine today so I could only get a little bit of work done. I finished the movement trays for my entire army so now they\'re much easier to move around. All my cavalry units, archers, infantry are able to be put on their trays and moved easily. I love it!

Here\'s a good portion of my cavalry:

Nearly complete with the Blood Knight Noble. His basecoats are all nearly completed, then from there on out, it\'ll be some shading and highlights. I figure I\'ll be nice and crisp on basecoating since highlighting and shading are pretty easy.

More tomorrow hopefully,

Jake

 

[redarmy27]

Finally my migraine is over, but the stuff I took for it keeps me up. I took a lot of it considering I had it for two days. It\'s now 3:50 in the morning and I\'m done painting for the night. It\'s funny, I got the urge to paint around 11:00 PM and I\'m finishing this late. Oh well, I had the urge and went with it.

I made some progress on my Blood Knight Noble, mainly doing cleanup and the works as well as some shading and highlighting. I then did some washes and use a little bit of the inks from the citadel range.

While waiting for the rider and the mount to dry, I got anxious and decided to crank out the base. I think it turned out rather well.

The snow that is on there is only a first layer. The first layer always dries too clear like that, which gives the effect of ice. I\'ll add one or two more light layers once this stuff dries.

I still have a bit to go on the entire piece, cleaning up some spots here and there, but it\'ll be worth it when he\'s done. He\'s one of the centerpieces for my army so I\'m sure I\'ll come back to him various times throughout the painting of the entire army as I get better ideas. He\'s been a big help on deciding how I should paint different sections of armor and such though.

Anyways, I\'m headed to bed. C & C is always appreciated!

Jake

 

[redarmy27]

Time for an update it seems.

I\'ve been hoping around my guys here and there and am currently working on the standard bearer for my army. I\'m entering this guy in for a contest so I\'ll be sure to take some extra time on him. I\'ve been reading around a lot about using greens for shading and maybe some grey/blues for highlights when it comes to using reds. This will be handy as my army will have a ton of red in it.

Sorry for the crappy pics, didn\'t have time to set up the light box.

Anyways, here he is. He only has the shading on it so far:

As always, C&C is appreciated.

Jake

 

[redarmy27]

Got some more done today. Trying to remember the correct settings for my camera. I have hard time achieving the correct focus on this kind of mini. Any advice would be appreciated.

Jake