Orc and Goblin Army Photo

Happy new year! I can't believe it's been 3 months since my last post. Well actually, I sort of can believe it, but it fills me with feelings of guilt about my neglect of the blog and stuff, so I shall feign shock at how long at has been...

The new year has started much like the previous one ended. Events are cancelled (we'd normally be getting ready for a road trip up to Cancon now), there is no sure timeline for when the games club will be back up and running, and everything is in a strange holding pattern. It doesn't do great things for my hobby motivation. On the bright side, a few people have started playing some games of 6th edition Warhammer Fantasy (including a game that took place right here, even though I was not involved). It's good to see some games happening again, even if people can't seem to decide exactly what they're going to play.

Recently I've noticed a number of whole army photos popping up on my Facebook feed, and it has finally helped me get up enough energy to take pictures of another of my armies. This time it's the Orcs and Goblins. 

Somewhere in the vicinity of 18,000 points, and over 1000 models. It took a while to fish them all out of the cabinets.

Dwarf army photo

Right, so after the fight I had with trying to get a decent picture of my Empire, I found the Dwarfs a bit easier. Or maybe I have already just lowered my standards and stopped caring. Whatever. Either way it's a win, right?

So this is what I currently have ready to go for my Dwarf army. It translates to about 7000 points in 8th edition. There are number of incomplete elements that join the gang for games of Kings of War, like Elementals. I need to finish them. Anyway...

First a "sensible" picture that people might be able to look at without scrolling around...

Empire Army Photo

Looking back through some of my old posts, I discovered it had been quite a long time since I took a whole army photo of my Empire army. Actually, it seems that quite a lot of my armies are in need of a new family photo - some of them are missing a lot of units.

I decided it was time to go through and try to take up-to-date photos of each of my armies. Then, like 2 months after I decided this, I actually got around to doing something about it... And discovered that it's really, really difficult taking a photo like this. There are too many models, and even playing with a lot of settings on multiple cameras, I just couldn't get a crisp shot of everything. Of course, this problem will be most pronounced with my biggest armies. I probably shouldn't have started with the Empire. Oh well. Live and learn. If I actually discover something magical that can improve this, I'll come back and try again.

Anyway, here is about the best I could manage with the tools I had on hand. It's about 20,000 points of stuff in 8th edition. I stuck a number of random Empire Ogres around the place too, because they were essentially made to match the army and they are useless in their own right if all their friends are off pulling duty as unit fillers (which was always their primary function).

Dwarfs vs Ogre Pirates

A few weeks ago Drew from Back in Drew's Day and I arranged to play a game at the club. He has his sights set upon Rockhammer (a local 2999pt tournament coming up soon - presumably easier than saying 3000 points with no Grand Army rules), and so that was the point level that we agreed upon. Unfortunately I ended up arriving late and he had to leave early, so we didn't get to play through the game in full. But I did take the camera and try to get a few photos, so here is my list and the pick of the shots that I took:

• Lord on Shieldbearers with Great Weapon, Gromril Armour, Rune of Stone, 2 Runes of Iron
• Daemon Slayer with 3 Runes of Fury
• Thane (BSB*) with Great Weapon, Gromril Armour, Master Rune of Gromril, 2 Runes of Iron
• Master Engineer with Gromril Armour
• Runesmith with Gromril Armour, Shield, Rune of Stone, Rune of Spellbreaking
• 30 Longbeards with Great Weapons; Heavy Armour; Full Command
• 10 Thunderers with Dwarf Handgun, Heavy Armour, Shield
• 12 Quarrellers with Dwarf Crossbow, Great Weapon, Heavy Armour, Full Command
• 19 Hammerers with Full Command, Shields
• 24 Ironbreakers with Full Command
• 20 Slayers with Standard, Musician, 1 Giantslayer
• Gyrocopter 
• Gyrocopter 
• Cannon
• Organ Gun with Rune of Accuracy, Rune of Forging

*Actually, I see now that I never paid for the Battle Standard. So my list was about 20 points over, and I am the worst kind of filthy cheat. Boo yeah! 

Drew's main unit of Pirate Ogre Ironguts, including his Tyrant (the slightly excessively large guy in the coat), the Slaughtermaster (nearest the camera) and the BSB (who is hiding behind the unit banner).

A less blurry Empire

The last time I took a whole army photo of my Empire, I was still trying to figure out how the new camera worked. Whilst I do not claim to have come close to mastering it yet, I do seem to be improving. Whilst I was doing something of an inventory (I'll talk more about that in a later post) I thought I would take the opportunity to have another attempt at some decent army shots.

Given how much these images really need to be blown up to be seen properly, I am putting them up at "original size". Apologies for what this will doubtless do to your beautiful browser window...

My entire Empire army as it currently stands.

Learning new angles

I haven't been making much hobby progress recently, but I do have something slightly different to report. Over the last couple of weeks I have taken possession of a tripod and remote for our DSLR camera. The hope is that with these additional tools, I will be better equipped to improve some of my photos. 

Specifically I am hoping to get better at taking wider angle shots - shots across the battlefield that take in more than a couple of units, and put more of them into focus. As far as I can tell, this means playing with something called "aperture". I don't truly understand how it works, but in practical terms it seems to mean spreading the camera's focus over objects at a range of depths. It also means leaving the shutter open for a really long time. When I crank the setting up to 32, the noise between the shutter opening and closing is something ridiculous like 20-30 seconds. As such, the tripod is obviously essential - nobody can hold a camera dead still for that long.

Anyway, I had a bit of a play with my new toys and thought I'd share my progress thus far.

This shot was taken at aperture 32. The 3 rows of models here are about a foot apart from each other. So although it's not the best shot, I've got things 24" apart more or less in focus. Given how enthusiastically the DSLR normally focuses on a small point to the exclusion of all else, this is a dramatic change.

Army photos have proven challenging with the new camera. Fiddling with aperture (32 again here) seems to help. Oh yeah, this is what all my painted Dwarfs look like at this point. Yay!

New gallery!

Well, despite my lack of blog updates over the last week, my efforts to paint all of my Knights Snow Leopard have continued. As is always the case, I find that my progress is depressingly slow. I broke the 21 Knights into 2 groups - the first of 11, the second of 10. I figured those would be manageable batches for painting, although now I am wondering whether 3 groups of 7 would not have been better.

Anyway, after several sittings (totaling maybe 8 hours) I still have not finished the first batch. They're getting there, but they still have a way to go. Here is how they currently look:

11 Knights Snow Leopard, looking mostly painted

The purple, white and armour are done on these guys. They have a basecoat on the gold details, but that will require 2 highlights. Then there is the skin and facial hair on the faces that are showing, before I have to move on to the horseflesh and saddles. In truth, they're not that far from done. But when I know I have another 10 to do before the end of the month, it feels like my progress is painfully slow.

In other news, as the title of this post suggests, I have added a new Gallery section to the blog. You can find a link to it in the header bar, or you can go directly to it from here.

Noakes organised a photo session at the club over the weekend, and Liam and Adam kindly volunteered their time and cameras (thanks guys!) to try to get some decent shots of everyone's models in the less-than-optimal conditions that could be arranged. The shots of the stuff I brought along are in the gallery, although I thought I would include a couple below as a teaser...