theottovonbismark
Member
Thanks for the complements guys, happy you are getting as much of a kick out of these venerable felines as I am .
@ Aiteal - well done on disturbing Chico with your expressive writing, that is much harder to do than paint Tigers.
@ CBV - I have a couple of those wood elf cats, now that you mention it painting him in a Cringer style might be a good way to represent the Battlecat/Cringer pairing on the tabletop - although I have a cat model courtesy of Cheetor earmarked for this also. I will paint up a proper purple Panthor for this unit in the next iteration of Tigers, which will likely be pretty soon. Theoretically the unit can be as big as 24 strong which is handy as there are loads of pop cats potentially - not that I would wish anyone to ever have to face that death star unit without some sneaky stuff of their own. The irony of fielding such a unit against some Skaven is not lost on me . I think that a Hello Kitty Tiger will be next to accompany Panthor.
@ Goblinlee - Painting them as pop-cats is indeed fun and helps in 2 important ways. It breaks up the monotony of the task for one thing as each paint job is mostly unique. It helps to mitigate against the mono pose nature of the models - although there are 2 Pan-Tiger models they are both just variants of one sculpt, although I only have one variant of the model to work with. A key thing in painting them is to keep certain details consistent throughout the unit - the mouth, eyes, claws and bases are done in the same manner on each model no matter the colour scheme. There is no fancy highlighting here, it is just a smooth base colour coat, a wash with Army Painter Quickshade Soft Tone and then when that it dry going over the raised areas with the base tone again. This is all the body really needs to look good on the table, if I started highlighting it in more detail it would probably look worse, I am letting the shading do most of the work for me. The face and claws receive more detailed painting as they are the focal point for the model. The handler was just one of those models I had lying about who seemed to fit at that point in time - that's just how it go's sometimes . It does help that he is posed dynamically - I envision these handlers as having to do a lot of running to keep up with these tigers. We have some synergy going now as your last blog posting gave me motivation to get those cats painted up - motivation is great when you can get some into you. Being in a community of like minded Zoggers sure helps there!
In other Slann related news I am working now on getting the Lizardmen up to full fighting strength of 20 strong. I have found the bits on the current plastic Savage Orks pretty useful. They have some great stone weapons and a cool looking standard which fits nicely with the idea of the Lizardmen being a failry stone age style culture. I will post up some kitbashes soon enough.
It occurred to me that you don't actually need many Slann models to make a Slann army for 3rd Edtion. Basically you need 10 Slann for the minimum Spawn band but you can then take Lizardmen, Trogladytes, Human Slaves, 4 Slann models for handlers with loads of animals. You could probably proxy the current lizardmen cold one riders in there if you wanted to have cavalry (the cold one is more important than the Slann on the top after all). The General could even be a Lizardman if you like. You could also use Pigmy allies - perhaps use skinks here, to bulk out the force even more. You could have a good sized force using less than 20 actual Slann models.
@ Aiteal - well done on disturbing Chico with your expressive writing, that is much harder to do than paint Tigers.
@ CBV - I have a couple of those wood elf cats, now that you mention it painting him in a Cringer style might be a good way to represent the Battlecat/Cringer pairing on the tabletop - although I have a cat model courtesy of Cheetor earmarked for this also. I will paint up a proper purple Panthor for this unit in the next iteration of Tigers, which will likely be pretty soon. Theoretically the unit can be as big as 24 strong which is handy as there are loads of pop cats potentially - not that I would wish anyone to ever have to face that death star unit without some sneaky stuff of their own. The irony of fielding such a unit against some Skaven is not lost on me . I think that a Hello Kitty Tiger will be next to accompany Panthor.
@ Goblinlee - Painting them as pop-cats is indeed fun and helps in 2 important ways. It breaks up the monotony of the task for one thing as each paint job is mostly unique. It helps to mitigate against the mono pose nature of the models - although there are 2 Pan-Tiger models they are both just variants of one sculpt, although I only have one variant of the model to work with. A key thing in painting them is to keep certain details consistent throughout the unit - the mouth, eyes, claws and bases are done in the same manner on each model no matter the colour scheme. There is no fancy highlighting here, it is just a smooth base colour coat, a wash with Army Painter Quickshade Soft Tone and then when that it dry going over the raised areas with the base tone again. This is all the body really needs to look good on the table, if I started highlighting it in more detail it would probably look worse, I am letting the shading do most of the work for me. The face and claws receive more detailed painting as they are the focal point for the model. The handler was just one of those models I had lying about who seemed to fit at that point in time - that's just how it go's sometimes . It does help that he is posed dynamically - I envision these handlers as having to do a lot of running to keep up with these tigers. We have some synergy going now as your last blog posting gave me motivation to get those cats painted up - motivation is great when you can get some into you. Being in a community of like minded Zoggers sure helps there!
In other Slann related news I am working now on getting the Lizardmen up to full fighting strength of 20 strong. I have found the bits on the current plastic Savage Orks pretty useful. They have some great stone weapons and a cool looking standard which fits nicely with the idea of the Lizardmen being a failry stone age style culture. I will post up some kitbashes soon enough.
It occurred to me that you don't actually need many Slann models to make a Slann army for 3rd Edtion. Basically you need 10 Slann for the minimum Spawn band but you can then take Lizardmen, Trogladytes, Human Slaves, 4 Slann models for handlers with loads of animals. You could probably proxy the current lizardmen cold one riders in there if you wanted to have cavalry (the cold one is more important than the Slann on the top after all). The General could even be a Lizardman if you like. You could also use Pigmy allies - perhaps use skinks here, to bulk out the force even more. You could have a good sized force using less than 20 actual Slann models.