Enter Plaguebearer

Soooooooo, I was pretty hooked into miniature painting, even though my zombies were simple models, simply painted with bad paints and bad brushes. But the seed was planted. I think I attended a few more 40k games and obsessed over GW's site quite a bit before splurging and getting the 40k rulebook, the Chaos Daemons codex, and a shiny set of dice.

Soon after acquiring these things I got my first GW models: the Plaguebearers of Nurgle Command box (5 models). Boy, was I excited. They are very cool models. I also got a handful of Vallejo Game Color paints in the nastiest green and brown hues I could find. I got a decent set of fine detail brushes from Hobby Lobby. And then I went at it! My first good paint job! I must give credit to the tutorial "Goatboy's Quick n Dirty Painting: Plaguebearers" as it did form the basis of this paint job, though I didn't use the same colors. These were heavily drybrushed building up from a base of Scorched Brown to either Snot Green or Bubonic Brown. As far as details, they were given Blood Red eyes, and Scorpion Green slime coming from their "pus factories," as I aptly named them. Enjoy!

First one finished, as he is the leader of the squad.

I was proud of myself for attempting to highlight the slime on the Icon.

Nothing really outstanding here, but solid.

I went in more recently and redid the teeth and tongues on these guys, since I've gotten a bit better with tiny details.

I like the basic blending on the sword (done by drybrushing). I had to retouch this up recently, but this is very similar to the original effect (perhaps a little cleaner).

"Pus factories."
Just thought this guy's spine was cool!

Humble Beginnings Part II

Okay, so you've seen my set of heroes from LNoE. Now it gets fun. I basically accomplished what I wanted to; to make the miniatures different enough to tell one from another on the game board. BUT I WANTED MORE. More paints, more minis. So even though this wasn't necessary in a practical sense, I decided to paint the 14 zombies that also came with the game. I went to Hobby Lobby and picked up a handful of Testors' Model Masters pots; yucky colors and a skin tone (because mixing a satisfactory one up from basic colors was a pain in the arse).

Since this is pic-heavy, I won't talk a whole lot in this post. I'll just let you know that there are 14 zombies, 7 green zombies and 7 brown zombies. My friend Austin told me about converting miniatures into different poses (I really didn't know anything about the art at this point) so I got pretty enthusiastic with that; I also tried my first few washes (by just thinning down paint mixes). This was a really fun experience that got me wanting to learn more. I started looking at CMoN and eventually got some 40k figs and started a paintin'! Enjoy.

The 7 Green Zombies

The first zombie I painted!

I sometimes get overenthusiastic with blood.

Simple conversion! This zombie's lost her arms!

Crawler conversion inspired by CoD:WaW Nazi Zombies.

I tried to take a chunk out of her leg and cut out a bone to be sticking out with my exacto knife; it kind of worked?

This one was fun; his skull, shoulder and forearm have been severed with some sharp object. Brains, bone and limb show.

Lunging crawler a la CoD:WaW.

The 7 Brown Zombies.

Simple conversion; am I losing steam?

I thought zombies were supposed to die by decapitation!

This zombie is holding a leg, which she has been munching on. This quite possibly could be her own.

Okay, I think here I was going for some kind of Resident Evil mutated zombie form. Or I just really like Goro from Mortal Kombat... with 2 heads?

Humble Beginnings

So Last Night on Earth (Flying Frog Productions) is a very awesome board game that I picked up last July. It's a blast. I haven't played Zombies!!! or any of the other undead-related board games out there, but I've been told by others who've played them all that LNoE is a little more interesting than the others.

My friends and I spent a few weeks over the summer playing the game as much as we could. My only real qualm was that the hero miniatures (there are 8 grey plastic individuals on the side of the living) were almost indistinguishable from any distance, which was annoying while playing the game. Since I had recently observed my first few 40k games, I guess I became "inspired" and decided to paint the heroes. My stepdad, Jason, had some Testors oil-based paints to paint model planes, so I first tried with some of his stuff.

FAIL. The oil-based paints seemed to react with the soft plastic of the minis and would not dry; they remained sticky. I tried to let them dry for a few days before I decided to take the paint off with paint thinner. So after a tiny bit of research, I decided to pick up this cheap acrylic Testors paint set. Please realize that I had no clue what I was doing!

So I painted the heroes, mixing any color I didn't have (including the flesh tones) and spending a long time fixing mistakes since they are so small (half the size of 40k minis) and I had never really done any painting at all before.

As you'll see, I painted in solid colors with no shading, no fine details picked out (eyes, etc). Oh, and by the way, GLOSS ALERT!

The Eight Heroes of Last Night on Earth

Sheriff Anderson, Small Town Law Man

Billy, The Sheriff's Son

Jake Cartwright, The Drifter

Jenny, The Farmer's Daughter

Johnny, High School Quarterback

Becky, The Nurse

Father Joseph, Man of the Cloth

Sally, High School Sweetheart

My Story Thus Far

I'd like to start at the beginning. On December 1st, 1987, at about 6:00 PM, a baby boy named Bryan was born... Well, maybe that's a little too early...

In all seriousness, I've always had a casual interest in gaming, but never really got the chance to explore it because of the time I invested in my other hobbies. Just an occasional board game here and there, but never really got to consistently hang with a gaming group or attend board game nights. My friends and I got a few D&D books, some minis and dice in high school but we kind of forgot that we were gonna try to get into that (sad face).

In July 2009, my friend Bryan N. found out about this game shop that he'd found in our native Springfield, IL, and was all excited because he was going to pick up the Mutant Chronicles starter set (if you don't know anything about it, it was a crappy miniature game revamp of the series a few years ago) because we had played the old Siege of the Citadel board game when we were much younger. We systematically got really excited about gaming again, after visiting the store. We found an awesome-looking zombie board game called Last Night On Earth, which we went in together to buy. Man, that game is such a blast! If I hadn't played that game, I probably would not be writing this right now. Unfortunately, since I live in Champaign, IL most of the time for school, Bryan N.'s interest fizzled out. But my inner nerd flourished.

I had a friend in Champaign, Austin, who played 40k weekly with his friend JT. I attended a few games and thought it looked pretty sweet! Then I started obsessively looking at CoolMiniOrNot.com and decided, "Hey! It'd be sweet if I painted the zombies and heroes from Last Night on Earth!" Austin filled me in on the process of converting, and I even tried a little bit of that! What did I care if I messed up the little guys?

That ended up being a really good experience, because I picked up some cheap acrylic paints, and learned some of the basics of the process (granted they used solid colors, cheap glossy Testors paints and no shading or anything). But I had a blast and it paved the way!

I then proceeded to obsess over GW's website until I decided I had to get in. I obsessively snatched up some of the models of my choice army, Chaos Daemons (more on that later!), and a buuuuunch of paints and brushes, and flocks, tools, foam, miniature cases and everything else you need in this hobby!

So here I am. Most of my models are unpainted still, but I'm finding my way in the painting world pretty nicely, I think! When I start posting pics, C&C most definitely welcome from anyone who reads this! Since then, I've taken over Austin's weekly game with JT, because he moved to Chicago, and painted some of JT's Eldar because he doesn't like modelling or painting! These were great experiences, and I'm excited to share them later.

My next post will definitely contain pictures of my heroes and zombies from Last Night on Earth, and a little more of my story! Thanks for reading, if anyone actually does!

Hello YouTube Community!

Just kidding, but you should check out Pruane2Forever’s videos on YouTube. They’re pretty fantastic.

So, here I am. Again. I started a blog a couple years ago and never ended up posting much. I didn’t even change my damn theme, damn it! Anyway, since August 2009 or so, I’ve been addicted to the tabletop wargame, Warhammer 40,000. I’ve acquired way too big a collection of models and paints in way too little time.

I’ve also dropped out of college temporarily until next Fall. Related to my newfound obsession? Not exactly. But that’s another story for another day.

I’ve decided to start a brand spankin' new 40k blog. Not that I have a wealth of information to share, or anything. I am pretty n00bular, after all. First and foremost, this blog is really just a personal log for myself (and this is a conversation with myself: Hi, Me!) Through this page, I hope to better understand my progress as a painter and a player and even to have a nice platform to show off the things I’ve done to friends and family (and anyone else out there who cares to look); one that’s better than craptacular pictures on my cell phone. And if anyone out there picks up any useful information, so be it!

Unfortunately I don’t really have any content other than my mission statement for this first post, but I’m really just getting things set-up. I’ll follow up pretty soon with a post about how and why I got into this hobby (personal chronicle, indeed!). Then soon I will post detailed pages about each project I've undertaken thus far!

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