Tale of OG Gamers - High Elves

[Tom Hale]

Re box picking I nominate box 3. No reason.

[cunningmatt]

Wednesday 6th October

So here we are Month 2 how exciting there's new models to paint, more unit naming and the exciting results of "What's In The Box" the hit new game show – I've already had an offer from Sky, all their HD channels for £17.99 a month <comedy drum roll>. Sorry I promise the jokes will get better (terms & conditions apply – your home may be at risk if you do not keep up repayments). The beginning of a new month seems like a good place to recap what the hell's going on, as this blog has become more confusing than an the conclusion to Lost.

Basically the whole point is painting a new army 200 points a month, being legal at 600, 1,400 and 2,000 points. The slight difference I've employed (as I'm always difficult) is to make an army that is legal separately but can be added to my existing High Elf army to make one large army if so required (with me?). In this army I want to add as many of the choices missing from my existing army as possible (various character options, Lothern Sea Guard, Phoenix Guard, White Lion Chariots, Dragon Princes, Ellyrian Reavers and Great Eagles), already ticked off that list last month's were the Lothern Sea Guard so what am I going to paint this month? I hear you cry – as if you possibly care, actually someone already has asked me so maybe I underestimate you the reader.

I had to actually do some planning at this stage, as the advantage of High Elves being worth lots of points thus reducing the amount of models needing to be painted was going to bite me on the arse if I wasn't careful, I needed to be legal at 600 points, i.e. I needed a character and three units – given the average High Elf unit can easily be 200 points there was a danger of me falling further off target than the remit of ITV's Daybreak. So my next two units were going to be some relatively small / cheap (for High Elves) units –  Ellyrian Sea Guard (another tick off the list and some more of the Island of Blood set) and some Shadow Warriors. Now I do already have a small Shadow Warriors unit in my existing army, but I had enough extra models kicking around to make a new unit. And to be honest looking at my grand army for a moment I'd be quite happy to combine the two units for a bigger set of Shadow Warriors.

Points wise I worked out that 5 Ellyrian Reavers with spears and bows (for that is how the models are armed) with full command came to 133 points. 6 Shadow Warriors with Shadow Walker was 108 points, adding that to my Lothern Sea Guard would make 448 points leaving me 150 points for a character (and 2 lost points – lost points are so annoying you feel you should use them but you're not sure why or what on). So this month I would paint up the Ellyrian Reavers and 4 Shadow Warriors (197 points) leaving me 2 Shadow Warriors (including the Shadow Walker) and one character to paint next month – three models in November, surely even I could do that?!

So with this month's painting task sorted out, and this week's Apprentice watched (all I've learnt is that I want more than 42% meat in my sausage), it's time to get on to this week in pictures.

Wednesday

Last Wednesday you may recall was terribly wet day, and an unfortunate casualty of that day was my Warhammer mini rulebook which had been in my less-waterproof-than-expected bag in the hope that repeated reading during the commute would help the rules soak into my brain. Sadly all that has soaked in is several gallons of rainwater, and while the book is now dry the crinkled pages will annoy me every day until 9th edition comes out – dam it!



Thursday

Thursday saw the construction and undercoating of all the models for this month. At the risk of opening a can of worms that will upset the more tactically minded of you, I hate units not to have a full command group (or at least all the options available to them) – there's something just wrong about it, it's like having Bruce Forsyth without a dodgy joke, an MP without an expenses form or Wayne Rooney without the belief that he should be in some kind of care. The Ellyrian Reaver models in the Island of Blood boxset only come with a champion, no other command models – so at the risk of overstretching my creativity I decided to do some converting <insert gasp/intake of breath>. Don't worry call off the UN, I wasn't going to go too crazy. The new Ellyrian Reavers are really nice models, so I didn't really want to go hacking them to pieces, additionally one part (or in this case three part) plastic models are probably the hardest to convert. With multipart plastic models obviously all the core bits are separate so you can swap loads of parts round, and you can convert individual parts before assembly, with metal there's generally the more forgiving nature of metal that parts can bend and be reshaped to some extent. But with single plastic models there's no bending, and all the accessories tend to be moulded across key parts making it difficult to do a simple snip.

Instead I had a rummage through my High Elf bits box for some parts to make a few alterations – the musician was made by adding the horn from the High Elf Spearmen set, the hands and excess 'ribbon' (there's probably a technical military term for fabric wound round a horn but we'll stick with ribbon) were filed off and I made some extra straps from green stuff to show it hanging from his side arms – well he can't have his horn in his hands all the time! (apologises I've come over all Graham Norton for a brief moment there). Careful position of the green stuff straps, and rotating the horn to the best angle meant that most of the rough edges where hands etc had been removed were covered up so I didn't need to worry about being too neat.



The standard bearer was even simpler, I used a spare banner from the Silver Helms unit (well if they can have that sized banner on a lance, surely the Reavers can had that size banner on a spear – otherwise there would be fights in the barracks). After cutting off an ornament attached to the spear and using more green stuff to mould the part of the banner that winds round the spear we had a fully fledged standard bearer.



Assembling cavalry always requires a little bit of green stuff as invariably the two halves of whatever steed you stick together don't quite join, generally it's a rather easy if slightly tedious process but two rather disturbing thoughts always occur to me at the point where you get to the horse's bottom – I have never talked about these feelings before in public but perhaps by sharing them others will come forward, and I will gain enlightenment.



Firstly at some point there will be the disturbing realisation of what you are actually doing, you are in fact shoving green modelling clay up a horse's arse with a metal instrument. This becomes even more disturbing when you realise it may be the closest thing you've come to, to a sexual experience all week. I am not for a moment suggesting this is in anyway an arousing or sexual experience for myself, but if like me you live a rather lonely life (or are married – the two seem to be largely similar in terms of sexual encounters) it can become apparent that if you were to list all your daily activities this would be the closest one in description at least to an intimate experience – depressing isn't it?

Secondly there is the awkward question of how much filling you do in the bottom department of your horse, around the body it's quite obvious you're just trying to get a smooth join across the back. But at the back end so to speak, there's a natural indentation shall we say, where your horse does his daily business, so how much filling do you do? On the one hand you don't want to smooth out the bottom so much that it appears your horse could never even pass wind let alone the digested remnants of a bail of hay, but on the other hand you don't want to leave such a large crevice that it appears your horse was buggered by a root marrow sideways. It's an interesting point, and where do you go for reference? "Horses Anuses" is a phrase you want to type into Google Images as much as you want to type in "Catholic Church at the Early Learning Centre", you just know it's going to produce unpleasant results. Though worryingly if you do type "Horses Anuses" into Google this post will now come up – is this an association I want? Ultimately I'm left to fill in my horses arses to an intermediate level in the hope that this halfway hous is how nature would shape its horses. I'm left with many secondary questions; am I alone in having these worries? And does talking about this technically make me a horse arse whisperer? Any how, I hope I'm not alone in this conundrum, and if anyone else has any thoughts they'd like to share with the group please go ahead (don't you wish I was still talking about sugary milk based beverages!).

Returning to a slightly more savoury note, it was now time to do the spraying and out to my balcony again, which leads me to introduce you to some residents of my house, my pair of balcony furs John & Edward:

This is John:


And this is Edward:



I've always had a strange desire to name my plants after dodgy pop acts (it may stem from having never been allowed a pet as a child). In my last flat I had two plants Daphne & Celeste, although after a tragic accident a new, slightly more bizarre double act of Enrique & Celeste was formed. John & Edward generally have to suffer blasts of erroneous spray paint/varnish in addition to the other Clapham elements, and I am slightly concerned they may not survive to Christmas, which is ironic as last year most people had the same thought of their namesake's careers.

Due to the rather wet weather this week I am came to a rather cunning plan of keeping me indoors and the paint outdoors, as you can see I sprayed through the patio doors:



Though I should warn you that this did lead to most of the fumes returning into the house, on the plus side the resultant high did lead to the housework getting done double quick time (on a health & safety note I must point out I cannot recommend this technique no matter how much you hate the vacuuming).

And so on that high – get it? That "High"? – tough crowd. On that high the Ellyrian Reavers were sprayed:



And so were the Shadow Warriors who you can see here skirmishing across Pixie Lott's face on a vintage edition of the London Lite, thankfully as they are skirmishers no dangerous terrain test is required for this:



The astute amongst you will notice that the lead Shadow Warrior (who will be my Shadow Walker) is the free Elf model given away on the front of the White Dwarf many moons ago for the release of Mordheim. I recently came across this model in my bits box and thought he'd make an excellent Shadow Warrior and I love the dynamic pose.

Sunday

A good tail wind meant, that even working around the excitement of the Wandsworth Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh II (which I've already discussed in far too much detail on these hallowed pages), that the Stage 1 basecoat was complete – so here's a quick overview with paint colours, as last month:

Stage 1 – Ellyrian Reavers






Base: Khemri Brown
Skulls (on base): Khemri Brown
Rocks (on base): Charadon Granite
Hooves: Chaos Black
Mane/Tail: Drybrush Adeptus Battlegrey
Horse Skin: Adeptus Battlegrey
Barding Cloak Outside/Rider Cloth: 1:1 Astronomican Grey : Skull White
Barding Cloak Inside/Feathers: 1:1 Enchanted Blue : Ice Blue
Barding Metal Trim/Arrow Flights/Trim: Iyanden Darksun
Silver Metal: Chainmail
Gold Metal: Tin Bitz
Wood: Khemri Brown
Leather: Scorched Brown
Flesh: Dwarf Flesh
Hair: Vomit Brown or Dheneb Stone or Calthan Brown

Stage 1 – Shadow Warriors






Base: Khemri Brown
Leather: Scorched Brown
Silver Metal: Chainmail
Gold Metal: Tin Bitz
Cloth: 1:1 Astronomican Grey : Skull White
Cloak: Chaos Black
Metal Trim/Arrow Flights: Iyanden Darksun
Wood: Khemri Brown
Flesh: Dwarf Flesh
Hair: Vomit Brown or Dheneb Stone or Calthan Brown

As you can see I included very little bright colours (only a tiny bit of yellow and no blue) on the Shadow Warriors, I couldn't really imagine them prancing around in the Shakeaway colours as they approach the enemy with stealth (not that I can really imagine the rest of army dressing like that but there you go) – but with the yellow trim they are tied to the rest of the army. Stage 2 will hopefully be finished this time next week.

Lastly, but not least that leaves us with the excitement of the "What's In the Box" competition-thing, I know you can barely contain yourself! Thanks for all the entries, I appreciate you humouring me!

Here we can see all the week's entrants written out on post-it notes, 17 appears twice as it was nominated twice (no accusations of cheating here):



They were then all folded up and placed in the Shakeaway cup:



For the record, for this draw we are using Shakeaway Cup Merlin and set of post-it notes Number 5 as chosen by Steve in Swanley. At this point I should introduce to another one of my plant family, this is Cheryl, who will be the independent adjudicator for this draw:



Cheryl is obviously named after Cheryl Cole/Tweedy, and has recently lost some colour in her leaves – might be down to malaria. Though unlike her alter ego my Cheryl can actually choose singers who don't muck up all their auditions, though in fairness she tries to avoid the ones about to get deported as well.

Back to the draw, and the numbers were mixed in the draw machine, and randomly the number drawn was Number 3, which was accepted after conformation from Cheryl - she was happy that the draw was fairly carried out in accordance with the rules:



We head under the bed now to Drawer Number 3, which was randomly selected as you saw, just before this week's Apprentice:



And opening the drawer here we can see that have randomly selected a drawer full of unpainted classic Dwarfs:



Getting them all out looks like this:



For those of you unfamiliar with my armies, hey who knows how far the reputation of this blog has spread you may even not have met me, my first painted army that I painted a few years ago is a Dwarf army consisting of some classic models from my childhood and more modern models. Drawer Number 3 contains those classic Dwarfs, from my teenage army, that I haven't quite painted yet.




Here's some classic Champion and Standard models, remember those days when you units didn't have a specific command group, instead each race had a couple of generic command groups and you had to assign them to the units they looked best in. Invariably one champion worked in all the units, and one just didn't work at all. Often your favourite standard model had to stand in as the army's Battle Standard Bearer – ahh simpler times!



Here are 15 classic, and by classic in this case I mean crap, Ironbreakers (sorry chaps) – never really felt the urge to paint these ones, they new ones are so much nicer.



The classic Thorgrim Grudgebearer model, still looks pretty imposing and amazingly ranks up pretty well in a unit despite not having a solid base.



Here's the old Anvil of Doom, when it had wheels, and stored power cards and shot out bolts of lightning and stuff – the crew aren't here, as they've been seconded for a long abandoned project that one day I might finish.



The menace of all armies here, the Organ Gun. Which interestingly has chariot scythes (though mine have come off), a classic model from the days when war machine crews were modelled with flailing empty arms.



Two classic Dwarf Cannons here with little step ladders for the Dwarfs – how practical, and a choice of plastic wheels available! Woo. I actually have a third of these which has been painted up.



The classic Dwarf Gyrocopter, which is a lot easier to assemble than the new bloody model – take note Games Workshop (plastic Gyrocopter for the new range of Dwarfs please! – whenever that may be, I have no insider knowledge).



12 classic Longbeards, which I actually quite like, they may end up on the painting table - and they have a different set of weapons to the current models, so they may turn out useful.



A practically ancient Dwarf Bolt Thrower here, I particularly like the crew member at the back who seems to be doing some kind of zombie impression.



And lastly everyone's favourite cheapo (money wise, this cost me £10!) units in the 4th edition, yes it's 20 plastic Dwarf Warriors notice some have been undercoated (which back when I played in 4th edition was more than most models!). One has even been badly painted, hence he's hidden in the back ranks. Sadly some of these guys have been salvaged for spare bases, as I can't really see me painting them up ever! Ahhh, poor unloved models.

I hope you enjoyed "What's In the Box?", well done to Tom who picked the winning box. Who knows if you did like it, I may even bring it back – probably when I'm in a hurry and haven't got anything to write about. Well there's still 35 boxes left, so I could probably do it every week until we get to the full 2,000 points!!

That just leaves me to say goodbye and leave you with the rather sad news, that despite these blogging efforts I didn't automatically get the job of new writer for the Games Workshop website:

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/content/article.jsp?catId=&categoryId=400001a&section=&aId=13100001a

How rude! See you next week, happy painting!

P.S. Hopefully next week I'll have thought of some children's TV inspired names for my new units, suggestions on a postcard to the usual address!

[Dave]

See those old dwarfs in a box...  Is there an element of unwantedness to any of them, by which I'm not really thinking the old plastic monopose guys. (ps I read the whole post if that helps make your mind up!).

Oh and you're completely wrong on the ironbreakers, the new ones are poo compared to these ones.  Fact. 

[fatolaf]

Great update as per, love cheryl!

Oh and that is not the first gyrocopter, I have the first one back from when it was called a Thwuppa thwuppa...Even older...

[cunningmatt]

See those old dwarfs in a box...  Is there an element of unwantedness to any of them, by which I'm not really thinking the old plastic monopose guys. (ps I read the whole post if that helps make your mind up!).

Oh and you're completely wrong on the ironbreakers, the new ones are poo compared to these ones.  Fact. 

Dave - afraid I'm not really interested in parting with them at present, even the crap Ironbreakers (which are craper than the original ones - I checked on Wikipeida - so it must be true), I'm thinking I may end up painting them all up one day - when I retire, maybe! Sorry I feel I cheated you out of 25 minutes of your life reading this post! But if I change my mind, or drift into insolvency, I'll keep you in mind!

Great update as per, love cheryl!

Oh and that is not the first gyrocopter, I have the first one back from when it was called a Thwuppa thwuppa...Even older...

You've got to love Cheryl, unless you're name's Gamu that is.

I beat the Thwuppa thwuppa was easier to put together than the dam new Gyrocopter model. 

[jackhoneysett]

I seriously struggled not to burst out laughing whilst reading this at work (and alerting my whole lab to the fact that I am not really working at all).

If it's any consolation, reading about horses' backsides being stuffed is the closest I've come to anything intimate today. (I'm in danger of turning this thread into some kind of emotional support group, so I'll stop now)

Disappointed that number 17 didn't win it - I think Cheryl's judgement may have been affected by her tropical illness 

[Mike]

Thwuppa thwuppa

??

I Get knocked down... but I get up again... you ain't ever gonna keep me down...

oh wait.

[cunningmatt]

If it's any consolation, reading about horses' backsides being stuffed is the closest I've come to anything intimate today. (I'm in danger of turning this thread into some kind of emotional support group, so I'll stop now)

I am glad I'm not the only one to bring this up, was rather concerend I had overstepped the mark, sorry if I gave your laziness at work away!

Disappointed that number 17 didn't win it - I think Cheryl's judgement may have been affected by her tropical illness

Don't you be questioning Cheryl's judgement, I don't want her going off her plant food again!

I Get knocked down... but I get up again... you ain't ever gonna keep me down...

What a tune!!! Oh wait showing my age again!

[Dave]

I too enjoyed a good snigger to myself whilst reading about the delicate matter of how much stuff you wanted to shove up the rear end of a horse.

As for the cheeky request for the dwarfs I wouldn't worry about it, I just see old metal and come over all funny sometimes.  It's not as if I even need any more, I'm now up to 60 hammerers in total of which 40 are the old 3rd ed ones, due to my compulsive ebay habits (ie they were less than £2 a figure so I had to buy them), I've got around 30 of those Ironbreakers so I just hope they can live without getting jealous of their inferior numbers and the poor old longbeards there are only 20 of them.  They must feel so left out, but that's their own fault for not carrying greatweapons, who ever heard of a dwarf without a great weapon (and don't mention my entire 7th ed army).

I wish I had access to my vast store of unpainted figures, and paints, being homeless (though not in the sense of roughing it on the street and living in a combination of a cardboard box and my own urine) is such a pain.  I can't wait until mid november when I hopefully move into my new flat and get to set up my very own painting cellar (the g/f is trying to ban me from doing it in the house but I'll be seeing how far I can push that one after all it'll be as much my house as hers!).  But I reckon a painting cellar with a daylight bulb will do the trick nicely as long as I remember not to make it the one which leaks in the rain.  What I mean is your blog makes me want to paint stuff.

Anyways enough of my ramblings, back to yours.

[cunningmatt]

Saturday 16th October

The forum's back and it's all brown, much to Nick Griffin's disgust! Yeah mint green was sooooo earlier in the week and it clashed with my thoughts. Sadly forum updates meant I couldn't post on Wednesday in my usual post-Apprentice slot, however I am thinking this new Saturday morning slot fits a children's television themed army so we may keep it, maybe I'll call it "Live & Painting" or "Painting in Da Bungalow"? (Better suggestions to the usual address). Anyway the upshot of all of this is that most of this post was written on Wednesday so apologies if the topical jokes/replies are no longer topical, and if anyone in the public spotlight who I've joked about has since died, but I'm not wasting this material!

Cheers for the comments Dave, glad my rambling makes you want to paint (not sure if that's in a "turn off the computer and don't read any more of this drivelous blog" kind of way or not) at least the blog now has a purpose and I will try and continue in that vein. Incidentally I think I've found a situation worse to paint than your leaky basement, but I shall come back to that later. And just to reassure regular readers that this week I've been made to promise that there will be no mention of Horses' Arses, bar that mention there.

Now unless you've been stuck in a Chilean mine for 69 days (or have had something else better to do) then you'll know that I'm painting up my High Elves and my theme is that my units will be named after children's television programmes – admittedly this doesn't really make sense but I'm sure there was a justifiable context somewhere. This month I'm painting up a unit of Ellyrian Reavers and some Shadow Warriors.

The Shadow Warriors I've decided to name after a current(ish) children's television series, called Raven. Raven is an adventure gameshow where kids are lead through a fantasy-medieval world by a character called Raven who can turn into said bird, (naturally) by sweeping his black cloak around him. It's this sweeping cloak action that I'm reminded of by my Shadow Walker, who will get painted next month, which is the free Mordheim figure from White Dwarf years ago – at the lead of the group in this rather poor picture.


Raven essentially involves children fighting to collect rings, in order to fight off evil demons, which despite generally high production values are portrayed by men wrapped in brown robes – much like monks with very big hoods. If you are the losing child at the end of the day's show then you must face the terrifying Way of the Warrior, essentially a life size version of one of the hardest levels of Sonic the Hedgehog you've ever faced. In this the child must evade swinging maces, razor sharp teeth and vicious battering rams in the kind of punishment any kind of supply teacher would love to have at their disposal. If you can avoid being pushed off the wooden beam onto the deadly wood chippings of doom, and head through the portal you escape elimination – a task which happens more rarely than Ann Widdicombe getting a 10 on Strictly Come Dancing, seriously it's really hard! Here's a clip for your enjoyment:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HROR9wdOvr4

For those of you not so familiar with current children's TV it's kind of a cross between the Crystal Maze and the classic children's show I'm sure you remember Knightmare. Knightmare was where a team of children guided another child who had a crash helmet on, to protect him from the harsh magics of a fantasy world (and from seeing how the somewhat dated visual effects were all green screened on). Bizarre oddities about the show included spy glasses, which were a kind of ancient CCTV where you could see the overly camp evil leaders plotting how they would stop these highly dangerous children (you know the ones wearing crash helmets with no eye slots!) from ruining their nefarious plans. Unlike most fantasy settings where the various regions are named by pulling out a random handful of letters from a Scrabble bag and hoping for the best, the realms were simply named "Level 1", "Level 2" and "Level 3" in a situation that most modern day signage makers would wish had been applied to the real world if simply to help push down production costs. My favourite oddity of this show was that spellcasting was done simply by spelling out the name of the spell, do you see what they have done there?! So to cast fireball you'd simply spell out F-I-R-E-B-A-L-L, allowing nerdy kids the chance to show of to their cooler classmates that there was a reason for paying attention. This of course meant that Harry Potter never took part in the show due to the inherent difficulties in casting "Wingardium Leviosa". And incidentally this format point led to the show's cancellation when in a scandal a dyslexic child accidentally miscast the spell "Rope Attack", leading to a member of the production team, poorly dressed as a goblin, having to inflict indecent acts upon the casting child.
I would like to take this opportunity to publicly apologise for the poor taste of that last joke.

So glossing over that unfortunate point, in summary my Shadow Warriors are to be called Raven's Shadow Warriors – this has the rather good advantage of actually being a not unreasonable name, certainly easier to explain to unknowing opponents than Smoggy's Sea Guard. The Ellyrian Reavers are proving more problematic the first thing that comes to mind when naming them is horses, but the only children's memory that relates to horses is various My Little Pony VHS's my sister subjected me to. The particular story that for some dark reason stays in my mind is where some kind of witch cast a spell which lead to a giant purple sludge spreading through Ponyland (whatever it's called, probably not something simple like Level 4 I'll wager) submerging everything in its path, in an unfortunate parody of the current terrible disaster in Hungary. The purple sludge even covered the Pony's castle and they were forced to move out into some kind of Holiday villa, in a genius move by the show's writers to sell a new Holiday villa playset. When the sludge receded they Ponies simply decided the villa was much better than the castle and so handed it over to someone else made homeless by the purple sludge incident without so much as popping back to pick up any choice belongings. The ponies thereby clearly implying how shit the castle was, and missing a good opportunity to make money through some kind of buy-to-let scheme. Anyhow since my own shame won't allow me to name my unit of Ellyrian Reavers "Cheerilee's Reavers" or "Rainbow Dash's Ellyrians" (both genuine My Little Pony characters I've done my Wikipedia research, though I think Cheerilee is now a regular contributor on Loose Women if I'm not mistaken), I'll have to come up with another option next week.

Anyway all that drivel and inappropriate jokes about children leads me to This Week in Pictures...

Thursday

Despite the ongoing inroads of work into my social life, I was so tired tonight I actually fell asleep during the Apprentice – scandal! I managed to get the second stage of both units painted up at this point. Here's the usual pictures and colour guide you've undoubtedly already decided to skip through to get to the rest of the lame jokes:

Stage 2 – Definitely not Cheerilee's Reavers







Base: *NO CHANGE*
Skulls (on base): Layer Dheneb Stone
Rocks (on base): Wash Badab Black
Hooves: *NO CHANGE*
Mane/Tail: Drybrush Codex Grey
Horse Skin: Layer 1:1 Adeptus Battlegrey : Codex Grey
Barding Cloak Outside/Rider Cloth: Layer 1:2 Astronomican Grey : Skull White
Barding Cloak Inside/Feathers: Layer Ice Blue (except large areas on barding which were layered 1:2 Enchanted Blue : Ice Blue and then further layered with pure Ice Blue)
Barding Metal Trim/Arrow Flights/Trim: Layer Golden Yellow
Silver Metal: Wash Badab Black
Gold Metal: Shining Gold
Wood: Layer Graveyard Earth
Leather: Wash Badab Black
Flesh: Layer Elf Flesh
Hair: Vomit Brown – washed with Ogryn Flesh. Dheneb Stone – washed with Badab Black. Calthan Brown – washed with Badab Black

Stage 2 – Raven's Shadow Warriors






Base: *NO CHANGE*
Leather: Wash Badab Black
Silver Metal: Wash Badab Black
Gold Metal: Shining Gold
Cloth: Layer 1:2 Astronomican Grey : Skull White
Cloak: Highlight 3:1 Chaos Black : Codex Grey
Metal Trim/Arrow Flights: Layer Golden Yellow
Wood: Layer Graveyard Earth
Flesh: Layer Elf Flesh
Hair: Vomit Brown – washed with Ogryn Flesh. Dheneb Stone – washed with Badab Black. Calthan Brown – washed with Badab Black

Saturday

Some weekends are busy weekends, but sometimes the best weekends are those where through some twist of chance, alignment of the planets or simply the worship of Hugh Edwards as a demi-god fate deals you a relaxing weekend. This weekend proved to be one of those, and in a bid to spend some "quality" time with my flatmate I agreed to do some painting in the living room table in the presence of Saturday night television with him. Little did I realise the fate that awaited me, which puts Dave's leaky basement way into perspective. First up was two hours of Strictly Come Dancing, a show which could only be made camper by the involvement of Dale Winton, but he's doing the lottery so for now we are safe. I did discover the show does give my dad employment, as judging by the content, he writes Bruce Forsyth's material. The main advantage of Strictly Come Dancing is it is not The X Factor, and hasn't reached the astronomical level of bullshit that The X Factor now has. I was about to find this out, as after two hours of Strictly, we now changed channel for a further two and a half hours of Simon Cowell and co. Sadly no photos of this exist so it's time to bring forth our old friend, the 4-year old artist to give us an artists' impression of me watching The X Factor, whilst painting:



You'll notice two important points about this picture, firstly our 4-year old artist has found a red pen, and secondly the 4-year old artist actually drew The X Factor graphics used on the show.

The bullshit begins pretty early on in The X Factor as we welcome the judges onto the stage with such a rousing rendition of Carmina Burana that you could be forgiven for believing the judges had been summoned from the deepest pits of hell itself. Meanwhile enough pyrotechnics are being set off on stage to brink down a stealth bomber, I'd like to believe that this how they insist on being introduced when they enter any room, I love the idea of Cheryl Cole walking into a public lavatory to the same set of special effects.

The next piece of bullshit the nation is subjected to is the "wildcard", where in a "twist" each judge is given a fourth wildcard act to bring to the finals. The "twist" being there isn't actually a "twist" this fourth act has no special rules, it's just as if they selected four acts in the first place. In fact if anything the "twist" is the fact that have "twisted" the definition of the word "twist" to include things that are in actually not classed as a "twist", but I leave such pondering to you.

Next we see a variety of disturbing acts, particular ones that stand out in terms of awfulness are Diva Fever an act so camp they actually gone all they way through gay and back to straight again, personally I'd rather spend an evening in with Scarlet Fever than Diva Fever. Then there's Wagner, not the German composer of "Ride of the Valkyries" and "Here Comes the Bride" fame, but someone who appears to have escaped a lunatic asylum. It's a sad side note that the majority of the British public will associate the later of these two with the name Wagner – what ever happened to our cultured society (says the man who just spent the last few paragraphs debating the plot line of My Little Pony – let he who is without sin cast the first stone!).

Line of the evening has to go to Wagner, who upon being revealed as Louis Walsh's wildcard said "It is like being brought back from the dead" – firstly how can he possibly know what being resurrected is like (unless of course he is the original German composer Wagner brought back to life in some kind of terrible twist of musical fate – in which case I allow him this point)? Secondly this is hardly a simile to which all of us can all relate to, unless I'm missing out on a major trend being brought back from the dead isn't a regular occurrence for the majority of the British public. And lastly, if the only way you can be resurrected is to have Louis Walsh pop round your house I'm up for staying dead.

As the night progresses I came to the disturbing conclusion that The X Factor is slowly morphing into the Eurovision Song Contest as a mix of indescribably bizarre acts grace the stage, the only thing missing is the sarcastic commentary of a bitter man – which my flatmate reliably informs me I am more than qualified to provide. Come on ITV you know the X Factor would be better if you could get a pisstaking commentary by pushing the red button!

After five and a half hours the reality marathon is over, though you can of course choose to watch The Xtra Factor should you're quench for dross not be fully saturated, I instead decided to have a lie down and take the opportunity to revaluate what I'm doing with my life. The one up to all this is that Saturday night TV is aimed at such an atrociously low IQ level I was able to do quite a large amount of painting despite all my ranting. However somehow the power of Chaos consumed me (I blame the presence of Aleisha Dixon or Aleshia Currys Digital as she now rebranded herself to) and some how Morgor and Ghorros Warhoof snuck onto the painting table for some basecoating:





On a separate X-Factor note, I have some concern for the Gamu-situation. Not that I have an opinion on whether she should be allowed to stay in the country, unlike the rest of the population and the media I am leaving this decision up to the various authorities who have looked through the evidence and have read her applications and know the rules – I know it's a controversial way of approaching modern life but there we go. However my concern is there seems to be a lot of public support for her to stay in the UK just because she's a good singer, would there have been the same public support to keep those two fat girls in from the audition who ended up punching each other because they couldn't sing? I think not. And that brings me to the worrying conclusion that in a few years time United Kingdom Border Control will simply be replaced by a panel of four judges (two of which aren't UK residents) who judge whether people should be allowed to stay in the country based on their singing abilities. A typical application could go as follows:
Judge:         "What's your name and where do you come from?"
Asylum Applicant:   "I'm Lucy, and from Azakstan*"
Judge:         "And why do you want to come to the UK?"
Asylum Applicant:     "To escape tyranny and oppression, have a number one single and claim benefits before they're all axed".
Judge:         "Brilliant, and what are you going to sing for us."
Asylum Applicant:     "Cheryl Cole's Fight for this Love".
Judge:         "Take it away".
ASYLUM APPLICANT SINGS
Judge:   "Thank you for that. Remember if you get through this round you're off to boot camp, I mean the Sangatte Refugee Camp, and if you survive that you can come round to the Judge's houses – though you'll have to stay in the garden because we're terribly middle class and can't have you ruining the carpets".
Asylum Applicant:    "I can't tell you how much this dream means to me".
Judge:   "Well I'm afraid to say that it is four No's from us, but don't worry you can try again next year."
Asylum Applicant:    "I will, provided I'm not stoned to death for my religious views"
Judge:   "Great, it's been lovely to meet you and Dermot's outside to give you a cuddle and take away your forged passport"

A disturbing thought I'm sure you'll agree.

*Azakstan isn't a real place, but bonus points if you know where I got the name of Azakstan from (it was from something that happened in the last fortnight), but no using Google – that's cheating!

Sunday

Sunday is disturbingly like Saturday, as living room painting in front of Strictly Come Dancing and The X Factor occurred again, albeit this time with the subtitle "Results". On Strictly Come Dancing this resulted in the revelation of which celebrity was leaving night being drawn out to levels of tedium unseen on British television since the axing of Kate Thornton's Celebrity Wrestling. Meanwhile on The X Factor 12.9 million people sat through recaps of the previous night so long, that you could conceivably nip out at the beginning of the recap to Homebase, purchase a shed, bring it home, assemble it in your garden, creosote the frame work, and have chance to shower and change before the final phone number disappears off the screen. Fortunately for the nation this week the judges were able to decide on which act to send home after the sing-off, I think there's always something deeply depressing when the judges can't agree and we are sent to Deadlock, a very over dramatic way of just using the initial viewer vote as we realise that the last 15 minutes of television could have been avoided if we'd done this in the first place. And with 12.9 million viewers this is equal to a total of 368 years of wasted viewing time!!

The main differences of Sunday to Saturday was that 90 minutes is a far more reasonable block of reality TV than 5 and a half hours. Also I got to watch the superb Harry Hill's TV Burp which I cannot recommend enough – his commentary of The X Factor is far more witty than I could ever hope to be. And thirdly during all this reality crap I did actually finish Stage 3 of this month's models, see not only Strictly Come Dancing – The Results and The X Factor – The Results, but Tale of OG Gamers – High Elves – The Results!:

Stage 3 – Still definitely not Cheerilee's Reavers






Base: *NO CHANGE*
Skulls (on base): Layer Bleached Bone
Rocks (on base): Drybrush Adeptus Battlegrey
Hooves: *NO CHANGE*
Mane/Tail: Drybrush Fortress Grey
Horse Skin: Highlight Fotress Grey
Barding Cloak Outside/Rider Cloth: Layer watered down Skull White
Barding Cloak Inside/Feathers: Highlight 1:1 Ice Blue : Skull White
Barding Metal Trim/Arrow Flights/Trim: Layer Sunburst Yellow
Silver Metal: Highlight Mithril Silver
Gold Metal: Wash Gryphonne Sepia
Wood: Layer watered down Bleached Bown
Leather: Highlight Bestial Brown
Flesh: Wash watered down Ogryn Flesh
Hair: Vomit Brown – highlighted with Vomit Brown. Dheneb Stone – highlighted with Bleached Bone. Calthan Brown – highlighted with Snakebite Leather

Stage 3 – Raven's Shadow Warriors






Base: *NO CHANGE*
Leather: Highlight Bestial Brown
Silver Metal: Highlight Mithril Silver
Gold Metal: Wash Gryphonne Sepia
Cloth: Layer watered down Skull White
Cloak: Highlight 1:1 Chaos Black : Codex Grey
Metal Trim/Arrow Flights: Layer Sunburst Yellow
Wood: Layer watered down Bleached Bown
Flesh: Wash watered down Ogryn Flesh
Hair: Vomit Brown – highlighted with Vomit Brown. Dheneb Stone – highlighted with Bleached Bone. Calthan Brown – highlighted with Snakebite Leather

Monday

My ongoing row with the Northern Line continued on Monday, when a station closure, points failure and signal failure on my journey home was still considered to be a "Good Service". I suppose it was better than the time when I was subject to "Minor Delays" when my journey was so slow I could have actually walked the same trip at street level quicker. I dread to think what "Severe Delays" will consist of. Nothing to do with painting but I felt it was worth getting off my chest!

Tuesday

The reason why I really don't like the Skaven was bought fully to the fore, when I came home to find a mouse scuttling around on my bathroom floor. Bloody vermin! Still I supposed I'd have been more annoyed if a full size Doomwheel had been careering around my hair wax supply zapping off lightning bolts. On the plus side unlike the High Elves of Blood Island I have pest control coming tomorrow.

Thursday I know I said I wrote the blog on Wednesday, I did, this bit came to mind afterwards.

Thoughts on the rescue of the Chilean miners:
1)   Why did Endemol not make the whole incident into a reality TV show, I'm sure Davina could have been flown out?
2)   How exciting is actually watching live feed of this on the BBC News Channel for 24 hours? About as exciting as Big Brother, hence point 1.
3)   What happened to International Rescue, Thunderbird 2 could have come and deployed the Mole and had them out in a day or two?
4)   According to the news the first miner came to the surface at midnight local time, yet was wearing special goggles to protect him from the glare of the Sun as his eyes wouldn't be used to it. How bright is the Chilean midnight Sun, I imagine it might be a similar kind of luminosity to the cave he was in? Or were the glasses simply to protect him from the glare of a thousand press flash bulbs.

On that point of pontification I say goodbye for another week, knowing full well I'll probably put some other comments up during the week rendering my goodbye very pointless and some may say deeply self-indulgent.

Oh and by the way if you are watching The X Factor tonight keep your eyes pealed during the commercial break at 8.55pm, you'll see and advert for a certain children's television channel, featuring a certain children's programme that a certain someone connected to this post is working on. You certainly won't see that certain someone just to warn you – public appearances do make shoplifting harder I find.