BillA - Age of Sigmar and Miscellaneous (120 points)

Well, we're in the home stretch, and those three weeks of painter's block mean I'm a bit below where I'd hoped to be in the points count, but I'm not going to stop, shrug my shoulders, and let that stand.  No, as Mr. Kipling put it, I'm going to fill an unforgiving minute with sixty seconds' worth of distance run.  I've been painting up a storm, and while it's a tad bit disappointing not to complete my Warhammer Historical/Kings of War army this challenge, I have got something else to show for my labors that I'm more than pleased with.

I've been lured into Games Workshop's Age of Sigmar, and a local Warhammer affiliate store is running an escalation league - in March, we play with 500-point armies, in April we boost them to 750, in May to 1000, etc.  So here is the first five hundred points of the "Sons of Flux," a Chaos warband swearing allegiance to Tzeentch, the dark god of Change, Magic and Mutation.  We have two units of ten Chaos Warriors, armed with handweapons and "Chaos Runeshields," complete with a full command, and leading them into battle is a Chaos Sorcerer Lord.

I've gone for a predominantly "cool" color scheme, with armor and cloaks in blues, and even blue-gray skin on those showing flesh.  The furs draped over their shoulders were painted up as polar bear furs, and the bulk of the metalwork is in silver.  I replaced the silver with "Antique Gold" for the Sorcerer Lord to really make him pop on the battlefield.  Here are a few close-ups:

Standard Bearer #1

Average Warrior

Chaos Sorcerer Lord, complete with heterochromia

Next up is Reaper's "D'kuhl M'Broon," a member of the "Bathalian" race, a stand-in for Dungeons and Dragons' iconic (and legally-restricted) Mind Flayers.  I've painted this fellow up (and this is in fact the third time I've painted this figure over the years) for a painting contest at my FLGS towards the end of March; I'm quite pleased with how he's come out, especially the red of the cloak and the highlighting of the folds on his black robe; with the red and gold cloak, and the bluish tint to the robe, I've jokingly begun calling him "Dr. Stranger," since his colors match those of Marvel comics' Sorcerer Supreme.

The skulls on the base are extras from the sprues the Chaos Warriors above came on, to disguise the fact that D'kuhl here is on a slotta base - he had a big chunk of excess metal stuck to the bottom of his integral base that I didn't have the tools to deal with, but it fit into the slot perfectly.

And finally, my last model for this year's painting challenge: Reaper's "Eldritch Demon," from their Bones line - who are we kidding? This is good old Cthulhu himself, in a convenient size - I have him glued here to a 50mm round base.  I decided to change up my color palette from my usual for Cthulhu-critters; while D'kuhl above was painted with Reaper's Ghoul Skin triad, the Eldritch Demon was basecoated in Reaper's "Olive Drab" and highlighted with "Worn Olive," before being given a final highlight of a 50-50 mix of Worn Olive and Yellowed Bone.

I opted to make the integral base a tiny spit of land projecting from the sea, with the base painted in Reaper's "Deep Ocean" and drybrushed with "Marine Teal" and "Surf Aqua." The base will be getting a few coats of high gloss varnish as soon as I can stop by the store and pick some up - by the time this post goes live we'll be in the throes of a massive late-season snowstorm, so we'll see how soon I can make it to the store.

And that's it for me this year.  This will be my last entry for the 7th Annual Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge, and I think between these and my Curtgeld I should juuuuuust squeak over my goal of 500 points.  Cheers everyone on another great Challenge, especially to Curt for wrangling us all together and the Minions for keeping us in line!

22x 28mm figures = 110 points
1x 28mm monster = 10 points

ByronM: A great post Bill, I especially like the red on your reaper figure it is very well shaded and looks great.  The other figures look good as well, but that one really stands out.  On the chaos warriors, may I suggest a wash of something dark over the gold?  It looks a little too shiny and clean to me, but maybe that's just me.  I like the painting on them it is just the gold that looks a little too shiny.  Lastly that Cthulhu looking figure is very good, I really like the aesthetic and the paint job on him.

Oh, and congrats on reaching your goal for the year!