Old Schooler New to Lizzies

Thanks for the support! I've decided to make a few variations on the basic skink body that I converted (see page 4 of this thread), because even with all the different arms they are all looking too much alike to me. So, going back to big bag of 97 5th edition skinks, I cut off the arms and equipment from the other archer (the original plastic skinks came in 2 different poses)...and after a bit of sculptural reconstruction, here's what I came up with (the original is on the right...duh!):







I plan to make one more variation, so I will have 3 different bodies to chose from. Stay tuned and thank for all your comments and encouragement!

P.S., I started painting my first Salamander...hopefully I will finish it tomorrow and have something to post soon!

 

I just had a look through all the previous pages. They look stunning, knowing exactly where they came from and what the models look like now. I really enjoy getting some newer ideas on cheap molding and making this game a bit lighter on the pocket book.

 

Thank's Dictator, I have to admit the lack of any feedback other than yours for a whole week is surprising. Is Warhammer dying out? Are people just bored with Lizards? Whazzzup? At any rate I am going to keep blogging away for now...hopefully I'm not just typing to myself here...

I made yet another skink variation, bringing the total number of variations to three. Basically this is just a conversion of my first piece, with his head raised and mouth open to show off his tongue. He looks a little more war-crazed this way and I think he'll look nice either throwing a javelin or swinging a hand weapon in one of my SKrox units

Here as a reminder (and for comparison) is the original conversion I made, so you don't have to search for it throughout this thread:



And here is the same body, with the head cut off:



After cutting open the mouth with an X-acto blade and making a few touch-ups with putty...



...the head is reattached, with some new texturing to fill in the gaps:



Having done this, now I need some decent hand weapons to go with these guys, as the puny ones that come in GW's plastic skinks box are just...puny! Not to mention they are all left handed, and held behind the shield. I imagine after throwing the javelins the skinks would switch hands and use the shield to parry. Very odd that GW doesn't provide a right handed weapon option other than the big Brave's club.

To remedy this I made two new weapons to be added to my next mold: 1) a conversion of the GW Skink Brave club (made a little smaller so that the Brave's weapon is still more impressive), and 2) an axe that I made from scratch, based on the weapon shown on page 23 of our book. Here they are:



Well I hope you guys like this stuff enough to write back. Have a nice weekend everyone!

 

Very interesting work there man!!! I really like how you are making your own personalized skinks and I must say they look really good.

As for your question about where everyone is, it's been a real busy week for me between work and painting. I was also very busy getting destroyed by my friend's Chaos Daemons army all day long today but that is another story...

Keep blogging, it's always a pleasure to see your work.

 

Well as for me, I've been steadily working on my old 5ed Lizzie army. I have completed 75 skink blowpipe wielders but not much else. I'm working on some Cold One bases now.

Where exactly do you like to buy your molding equipment from?

 

O.k., I took a break from sculpting and converting to do some painting. I've actually painted very little because I am working overdrive to cast and field enough of those converted skinks to put 2 cohorts on the table and about 4 skirmishing units!

So here is one of my Salamanders, ready to go for this Sunday's game:




The colors and pattern are taken from a Dumeril's Monitor Lizard, in case you were wondering

The rock is from my driveway, with some extra putty on it, sculpted so that the feet and toes sit on the rock seamlessly (there is actually a rather unattractive thick metal platform/base under each foot).

Pretty happy with the results, although I think I'd like to add some more different kinds of grass to the base...this will do for now. I like this miniature so much more than the new GW Salamander. So glad I have a second one (even if it is still in the blister pack at the moment...)

I'll take another photo of it together with the handlers when I get around to doing more photography.

Oh, Dictator, take a look in this thread, a page or two ago, I gave the link for the place where I get my casting and mold making supplies.

 

neat salamander

i love the striking colors "to show the other animals it is dangerous and they should stay away", but i do think the rock is a bit dull and boring. perhaps you could tint parts of it with different washes to make it look like those layers you get in stone over millions of years... whatever you call them... as you said, some more kinds of grass would spice it up too, or why not some plastic vegetation?

i really like the work you are putting in to the details (modelling the rock so it fit the feet better, and generally covering up every joint). hope to see more from you soon, and good luck in the game on sunday

 

Thanks The "stay Away I'm dangerous" look was exactly what I had in mind actually

I probably should have taken a photo before painting to show all the putty work I did on this mini. I am planning to do a different conversion on the next one. Wouldn't do to have both Sallies looking identical. As for the base, no doubt I will go back and fancy this up a little bit. The idea of doing strata in the rock is a good one, but I'll have to practice that a bit before I attempt it. I'm also of a mind to keep the surroundings simple given how wild the pattern is on this guy's body. I had originally planned to do a lot with the sail, but in the end went with a simple blending of red to yellow as a juxtaposition against the black striping.

Thanks also for wishing me luck this coming Sunday. Last game was a rout, so I expect my opponent will have some revenge planned against me..damn dirty High Elf tricks no doubt! My list is pretty much the same as last time, which always makes me very nervous...but I haven't had the time to build up any new units, nor am I advanced enough in the campaign to have a lot of options. Hopefully within the next few turns I'll be able to take Terradons or a Steg...need to conquer some more territory first (and drive the pointy ears out of the Ziggurat they currently hold....long story...)

 

I love the old school salamander look and your paint job in particular.

 

I like the color scheme. Especially since the rest of your army looks just as sharp. I would have told anyone else to be careful of such a bold scheme if they were to have the rest of their army dull colors. It always seems to bring a huge target on their chests.

Great work altogether and I look forward to seeing the next few models completed.

 

I figure he's going to be a target anyway, might as well make the most of it

 

Awsome paint job love the basing the preditor needing height comes through beautifully

 

Thanks

Just coming off a really bad loss and feeling crappy today. I need my mojo back... I was playing a very tough scenario that favored the other guy (HE) and hurt me (had to go the length of the board diagonally to get to him, lots of difficult terrain in the way, ancient forests and mysterious terrain I didn't want to get into) and he had +1 to cast Lore of Death in this scenario (because of a certain terrain feature) and managed to channel at least one dice EVERY turn lucky git!).

I was using almost the same exact army I used last time, not that I wanted to, but I lack enough models at this point to switch things around much. Added to that, he had played practice games against my exact army with the help of a very experienced player. I've spent all my in-between games time sculpting and painting (and casting all these skinks I've sculpted in resin, which is very time consuming).

This was only my 2nd real game using 8th edition. My army was basically a skink priest, skink BSB, 2 SKrox (3 Krox, 24 Skinks), 1 unit of 18 saurus 6x3, 3 units of 10 skink skirmishers, 1 unit of 5 chameleons and my sallie. Same army I wiped the floor with him in our first game, and I've been playing warahamer since 1994, so I felt I could do o.k. with it even though I don't have the models yet to switch anything out. My fear was that he'd bring cavalry and eliminate all my supporting units, and sure enough I felt that his army was pretty much tooled up to give mine a pretty hard time...he had a unit of silver helm Cav and 2 eagles to attack my support units and keep me off balance, a solid core of 21 phoenix guard (7x3) and 24 Seaguard (8x3), along with a unit of 10 archers (that's a fair amount of shooting) plus 2 mages, a level 2 and level 1, each with an item that gave an extra spell (so he pretty much had the whole Death deck, including The Purple Sun, which he never got off, but I always needed to save dispell dice for).

I should also mention that in this scenario I was not able to deploy scouts (the scenario gets rolled just before the game, so I had no way to know this), so my Chameleons basically functioned as another unit of skirmishing skinks.

I still get it confused with 7th edition rules all the time (example - not throwing enough dice at my first spell - forgetting that if I fail to cast I am DONE with the magic phase). On top of that my dice were pitiful beyond belief through the whole game, culminating in my general/skink priest getting sucked into the void. I don't like to whine about dice luck, but really my dice were truly bad from turn 1 right on through turn 6.

After my priest was sucked away he picked off my BSB with magic and when my only unit that managed to get into combat, a SKrox unit, lost combat by 1 against the Pheonix guard, they failed their LD test (rolled an 11 with cold blood!) and had no reroll, and then rolled "snake eyes" as their flee distance.

So having lost my general, BSB, one 300+/- point unit and half of another Skrox unit (again, to some bad dice), and note, we give half VP when unit is at half strength, it was a massacre. All I did against him was kill the eagles, I think...plus a few handfuls of elves but not enough to claim any VP.

I should finally note that in the campaign we are playing in, I cannot take a Slann (until I get a Lvl 2 Priest up to "Lord" level, which basically means he's have to be victorious in 4 battles). That's a big problem I am finding.

I have models to field 2 big units of Saurus and a box of CoC, and have another Sallie in a blister that I haven't assembled yet...a lot of work to do to get these ready for the table top as I take my time with models, as I think you can hopefully tell from the photos I've posted here...

So what are people doing against these highly mobile, magically tooled up, pretty nigh unbeatable in melee High Elf lists when you have no access to a Slann?? Our games are at about 1300 points at this early stage of the campaign. (reposting this to the "tactics" section too)

I'm afraid that the future of the campaign is looking bad now for the lizards, as this army was the only thing standing between me and the HE rolling into my territories and taking away loads of my resources before I can get some banners up to stop his advance...hoping that doesn't take away my motivation to keep sculpting and painting this army...I was just getting on a roll here....

 

Thanks a ton, I know you're right...I've lost plenty of games, and those are the ones I remember and learn and grow from in the end. What sucks is that this affects the way the campaign is going to go for the next year, and that's a long time to be back on your heals. I need to regroup and hit back hard, and soon, if I am going to have a chance...

 

T`hinker`er, don't be too hard on yourself... At the end of the day, playing the game is what is fun. Winning sure is better, but learning from your mistakes is what is most important.

I played my friend's Daemons army the other day. After a H-O-R-R-I-B-L-E start, I rallied in the end and almost came back. I still lost, but I made the best out of it. I can point many mistakes I made during the game and I sure won't make them again (hopefully). I also had tremedous bad luck with rolls while he must have made that 5+ Ward Save at least 30 times during the game.

At the end of the day, I still had a good time, with a good friend and played a decent game after some very costly mistakes.

As for rules confusion, I've played 3 games of 8th, and I still mix rules up back from 6th edition... So yeah, it happens .

 

Thanks, I know you're right...I invest way too much energy and emotion into my Warhammer... I did learn a few things for sure and hey, if it makes me a better player, I can deal with the occasional ass whooping.

Unfortunately part of the problem is that my opponent is a bit of a whiner and plays a pretty cut throat game...hard to shrug it off when a big part of the reason I lost so bad was that I allowed him to take a move back and re-do it so that he could be in range to cast a spell at my BSB and kill him (which lead to my Skrox unit not being able to re-roll a failed steadfast break test and lose the game). This left a bad feeling in me.

The group is going to have a discussion about this and hopefully sportsmanship will improve. As for the rest...guess I'll be painting that Steggadon sooner than I planned to

I'm sure in a day or two I will be ready to start painting figures again...

 

O.k., so to move away from the topic of my ignominious defeat to something that will get me motivated again to work on my army, here are some photos from yesterday's game, showing where I am at with my Core units.

First up, the Saurus, who are not done yet by a long shot. Still, here's a peak:



The base coats were put on with an airbrush in about 30 minutes for the whole unit (gotta love it!) Now I have to add those tiger stripes to all the figures...that will take quite a while longer! I'm Noticing that the feathers I put on the standard bearer's weapon broke off...hmmm, that explains why I lost!

So is anyone here old enough to understand the saying on the banner?

And as for the Skinks:



The two in the back closest to the camera are ones that I sculpted myself - woo hoo Note: the big eagle is about to die from poison javelins (one of my few accomplishments in this battle) These were also airbrushed in Reaper paint's "Moss", with a Traka Green wash and Citadel "Hawk Turquoise" on the crests. Still need to do those orange spots (i.e., See my Salamander hearders).

Thanks again for your support and your comments are appreciated!

 

Firstly, wow. Your models are amazing. I wish I had the motivation/skill/time to be able to do that with mine, which are also the 5th edition models.

I'm quite interested in this campaign you are playing, as I have only ever played single battles before.

How does it work? Do you have a board you have to move around with some army representation and then if you come into contact with someone else, fight a battle according to that tile?

How do you "unlock" new units, like you were saying with the stegadon? Are there set rules for this I can find somewhere or did you invent them?

 

Thanks manm 3 cheers for "ancient" Saurus!

There is a picture of our campaign map and some info about it earlier on in this thread: http://www.lustria-online.com/threads/old-schooler-new-to-lizzies.5025/

If you can link over to The UnderEmpire (where I am known as "Bobtail Maneater"). there is a very detailed description of the rules we use that should answer most of your questions. The link for that is here: http://s6.zetaboards.com/The_UnderEmpire/topic/1165016/2/

As part of the campaign system, units gain advantages or have penalties applied based on whether they are (from worst to best): proxies, unpainted, painted to minimum standard (3 colors) or conversions, and finally, "finished". The rest of the group reaches a consensus if there is any doubt about what level a miniature or unit has achieved. It is a great motivator to actually get those old miniatures dusted off and done, let me tell you, especially when the 50 points +/- can mean the difference between a win and a loss