Vaul's wrath support battery: 3x Shadow Weaver - update 1

Hi guys!
I made some progress on the Shadow Veawers, the yellow bits are pretty much done on the batteries. In the end I will probably go in with some edge highlighting

Shadows and highlights are also complete on the gunners. Just some black lining left to do on some modes

I really like to known what you guys think on the shadows: are they too dark?

With the yellow bits done it's time to start on the blue ones, beginning with a dark grey base coat

I will have more updates in the following days as work progress on those big guns!

Vaul's wrath support battery: 3x Shadow Weaver

Hi guys!
I'm back from the holidays with a new project: a unit of Vaul's wrath support batteries I'm building for my Eldar army that it's currently in need of  a bit more of long range fire power to deal with infantry and light vehicles. For the moment I'm going with three Shadow Veawers but I've magnetised the gun so I could easily swap it out for one of the other options if the need arise

The model is very easy to assembly on the paper but doing so will make painting it an hellish job so I'm going to paint almost every single bits separately. I'm also using six stock Guardians as the gunners to add a bit of variety. Game-wise I will ignore the guy sitting on the gun piece itself as every support battery can field only two gunners

Here are all the bits ready to be primed: almost half of them will be primed in white while the other will get primed with German Panzer Grey as usual for my Iyanden colour scheme

And here are the primed bits:

I also started to work on the yellow sections.  This is were things start to be a little different from how I painted my Iyanden army so far. During the last month I did some experiments because I was not 100% satisfied by how my airbrush works keep turning out. They were always a bit chalky or dusty and not as bright as I wanted them

One of the things I tried out was to apply the first coat of colour (the base coat layer) with a brush instead that airbrushing it. Only after I achieved a nice solid coat of colour I went in with my airbrush to complete the job

Here is a example of what I'm talking about. In the first image you can see a couple of Wraithguards I painted as a test on the yellow before I painted my Wraithnight. On the second image you can see another Wraithguard I painted following my new method

So the first order of business was to put down this first layer of brushed on yellow. To get a more brighter base layer I'm starting for Vallejo Game Color Sun Yellow:

So far so good. Next up: working on the yellow with the airbrush

Games Workshop Digital era?

It look like that Games Workshop Digital division is leading the show for the current Christmas season, buffing up and supporting GW models offering with new downloadablecontent (DLC) available both for Apple iBooks and standard e-books readers

Joining force with The Black Library they have brought us the 2013 Digital Advent Calendar: not an original idea per se, but surely a serious effort to offer us new content and rules everyday

Personally, I bought the rules (or, as they call them, dataslates) for both Be'lakor (the 40K flavor, there is a Warhammer Fantasy Battle version) and the Tau Fireblade Support Cadre

I always loved the Be'lakor model and I bough him some times ago (you can find an unboxing here) and this new rules will allow me to field him, someday, along my other Chaos models. And from a gaming point of view, the rules are very good if not a bit pricey

The Firebase Support Cadre complement the box set by the same name that Games Workshop released in November, a box set for with you pay 6 Broadside Suits and get a Ripdite for free, something that it's quite astonishing by itself. And again, the rules are very good! If think we will see more of this guys on the table than before, if you could believe it

Today, on the 5th day of the Advent Calendar, they released the rules another box set they released in November: the Adeptus Astartes Storm Wing, a formation composed by a Storm Raven and two Storm Talons so it look like that they are really going to release rules for all the box sets and this if really making me exited about the Eldar one! :) I already own all the models included in that box set (a Wraithknight, two Wraithlords, fifteen Wraighguards / Wraithblades) so I can't wait to get some cool rules too and field the  Iyanden Ghost army I always wanted to play :D

But GW Digital efforts are not new. If you look up Games Workshop on the iBookstore you will find that there are already 169 digital product already available, ranging from Codices to Painting Guides, Rulebooks and expansions, both for Warhammer 40K and Warhammer Fantasy Battles, most of witch are available as an e-book or in the enhanced iBooks version

You can see the complete offering here:

So, is GW Digital era really begun?

We are getting more content, more frequently and keeping it all together is starting to get a bit complicated. I will not be surprised at all if in the near future they came out with an App to aggregate all the digital content, at least for the ones related to game rules and army composition. Add in an army list builder it will sell like candies

I'm hoping for too much?

Tau Empire XV104 Riptide Battlesuit - completed!

And it's done!

Tau Empire XV104 Riptide Battlesuit - update 2

Just a quick update guys!

I reworked the white areas a bit after cleaning them up following the black lining of the armour panels and put down the base colour of the red surfaces with VMC Flat Red

Now on to highlighting!