The Path to Directorate

Sooo… time for the update!

Fist of all I am so stoked that I was chosen as a #PathOfConquest Painting Competition Winner! Thank you OTT team for choosing the Mimetic Assassin, you really made my day! And congratulations to the other finalists – stunning work everyone!

Ok now to the Milestone 3 update. I am still waiting for the models to pick up from my FLGS… last update from the store was that they have received the product to the store this week so I am expecting to pick it up the coming week.

Meanwhile I’ve started my work on Founder’s Exclusive model: Twisted. I’ve finished the base for it – I’ve played a lot with the liquid pigments from GreenStuffWorld and also oil and enamel washes. If you have an Instagram account you can check step by step tutorial for the base:

https://www.instagram.com/s/aGlnaGxpZ2h0OjE3ODkwNDc3NzQ3OTA2NDcy?igshid=xts7ljcg6t3j&story_media_id=2499647228811810374

As there is no new models available that I can show you guys I am attaching my currently painted The Spires army from previous milestones.

Have a good one,

Andrej

…and it’s done! Milestone 2 completed.

Abomination was the missing piece and I managed to finish it off in the first days of January. As previously mentioned I needed to redo the skin with acrylics after the fail with the oil paints and washes – this medium is still new to me so I will need to explore it bit more.

Base for the Abomination was almost a project of its own. I decided to make it more wet ground like with puddles with Dweghom ruins laying around. Here I was extensively using enamels – they really help in achieving more realistic look. Added some moss and tufts at the end to finalise it.

So The Spires army now stand at around 900 points and I really love how everything looks so far.

Question is what I’ll be adding to Milestone 3 as my FLGS still did not received any new Conquest product.

I got Twisted the Avatar Projection limited edition resin diorama directly from Para Bellum, so this one is definitely getting into Milestone 3 ??

Alright!

Just a couple of hours left in 2020! Time for a quick status report as I need to go and prepare New Year’s dinner ?

• Mimetic Assassin completed ✅
• Biomancer completed ✅
• Marksman Clones completed ✅
• Abomination unfinished ❌

So it was all looking good but somehow my gamble with the oils on Abomination didn’t payed off. I made a big mistake and made an oil wash over dried oil paint. Even though I varnished it before that, white spirit in an oil wash ate though the whole base paint and everything became a big mess. So I had to redo all the base skin in acrylics and then do a oil wash and this is where I had to leave it as I wanted to focus on finishing Marksman Clones. Which I completed couple of hours ago and boy it took a lot of patience with that kit.

But all in all I am happy how everything turned out. Abomination will be I guess my first finished model in 2021 ??

I wish everyone a happy and a healthy 2021!

Hello fellow hobbyists!

Time for the Milestone 2 progress update of my Path to Conquest!

Things are looking good so far. My plan is to finish off this milestone by the end of this year. Let’s see where we’re currently at:

Mimetic Assassin is nearly complete, needs some touch ups  and it’s ready to go. I really dig how it turned out. Raw flesh alien skin in contrast with the bone armour and weathered base with some decaying Drones left on the field.

Our big boy Abomination got his armour and base skin done. The skin was done with oil paints – bit risky time wise as oils tend to dry very slow. But the blending of skin tones was done very quick. So while oils were drying I went on and primed Marksman Clones in Mechanicus Standard Grey with a Zenithal highlight of Zandri Dust. Still unsure what to do with the arrows. I might end up not assemble them at all.

Last one is Biomancer hero which I decided to paint in subassemblies. Undercoat is Grey Seer Contrast as most of the colours will be very warm. I spent nearly 1 hour and a half on just painting the head. This is the part of the mini that will take most of the attention so I want it to be as good as possible.

So guys, do you think I will finish milestone 2 in time? We’ll find out soon enough as the clock is ticking tick tock!

Alright, let us continue!

For Milestone 2 I’ve basically picked what was available in our local gaming shop from The Spires range. I’ve ordered more stuff but it will probably come in January next year.

So in M2 I am painting Abomination from the Core box, Marksman Clones, Mimetic Assassin and a Biomancer.

I’ve built Marksman Clones and man it was pretty tough job – specially those arrows killed me – I think I’ve broken each getting it out of the sprue. But I loooove the models – they really look badass!

Abomination was primed in chaos black. I started laying the base colours for the armour – scenery for the base was done in M1 so now it needs painting. Pretty sure this model will take up majority of my time – just because it is freaking huge!

Mimetic Assassin – oh I just love it – the resin quality is by far best I’ve had in my hands so far. Just wow. For this model I will certainly be leveling up the painting job as I did for Pheromancer. I’ve added the Brute Drone head that I had leftover from building that kit – wanted to add up to the Drones decaying on the field theme.

I finished the last two stands of Force-Grown Drones and thus milestone 1 is completed. I made a quick shot of the milestorne 1 army and I also have made couple of better shots of Pheromancer, Brute Drones and Force-Grown Drones.

On my IG acc. highlights I posted a speed painting tutorial how I did my Force-Grown Drones: https://www.instagram.com/ulverbiteminiatures/

Now onto a Milestone 2 – no time to waste ??

My painted army is growing! I am now missing two stands of Force-Grown drones and my Milestone 1 will be complete. Luckily I have developed really simple painting recipe for them, so one stand (4 miniatures) takes about 1 hour to paint. I am thinking of making how to paint tutorial for them.

I made couple of shots of my completed army and especially when put all together I am happy with the differentiation between true Spires and their biomass creations. I just love how FG Drones look fierce in the line formation.

I cannot wait to get my hands on more Conquest miniatures – they are so amazing to paint. Time to think about what to bring into Milestone 2.

Time for some painting progress report!

I believe that I have found the right color scheme direction. Final look will not be as grimdark as I have thought at first, but more like semi-grimdark, which is fine. Especially The Spire heroes will be represented in more lively alienesque higher class nobility style in contrast to more organic look & feel of their creations.

So I used three different painting approaches: Brute Drones are painted in a traditional base, layer, (oil) wash, layer, highlight method while Force-Grown Drones I went with even quicker simpler method of using Contrast paints in combination of stippling and drybrushing. Pheromancer hero was firstly value sketched and then I’ve used primarily inks for purple, violet & turquoise transitions darkened down with Payne’s Grey ink – inks are very rich in pigmentation so this way you can get nice saturated effects. Additionally I’ve made an OSL effect on the upper part of the body that contrasts nicely against lower part.

In just 2 days I’ve assembled and based The Spires half of the core box. For the Abomination’s base I went with Dweghom ruins with some statues and a ruined column – as per lore The Spires and Dweghom are ancient foes.

Next I’ve decided to go with a bit of unorthodox undercoat for the army. Firstly I’ve primed everything with Chaos Black, then I went anti-zenithal 45 degree form down up with Chaotic Red and lastly true zenithal 45 degree from above with Zandri dust. As you can see on the pictures, the result was quite interesting and it will be a nice foundation start for the paint scheme that I want to achieve and that is a Grimdark style!

Stay tuned for more!