Rising from the Ashes – Jodain’s Spring Clean

Well the Broadside show has been and gone and we changed games in the end so the drive to complete the Phoenix has drained away and so no updates in June.

I did manage to finish off some figures last weekend, the six Hurricane Iniaites and 4 of the Isawa Inquisitors that I had started in the last post.  I made a serious mess of the 5 Inquisitor and so it will go and be striped back down and re-primed.

Maybe I bit off a bit more than I could chew with this project, but I am happy with the amount of figures that I have managed to paint.  I will continue to paint this army, but I’m going to be mixing a few different figures in now to give me a freshen up – but first I have some 1:1 terrain to paint.

A slow down in production due to real-life has meant that I haven’t finished any figures, although the next batch of 11 are ready for final basing and varnish.

I did spend some time this weekend preparing the next batch of figures to be painted, which involved a bit of work to re-attach one of the Isawa Inquisitors to their base as the link at the toes had broken.  A bit of pinning and green stuff makes for a repair and lifts the figure a little higher.

Lastly I decided to strip back the paint on a group of Hurriance Iniaties which my son had tried to paint.  Having looked online I decided to have a go at cleaning them up with IPA, which I picked up from Amazon.  I was really happy with how well it cleaned up the figrues and how quickly.  They have mostly been left a bit grey, but that was the primer sitting in the IPA, which I probably should have changed between figures.

I’ve not got round to posting over the last two bank holiday weekends, which is strange as I’ve had an extra day off on both weekends.  Oh well.

Still I have continued to make good progress on the Phoenix Clan Army.

A bit of a mixture here, first off is the well known Phoenix mounted archers (who am I kidding), the better known Hurricane Initiates (there are another 6 that need stripping and repainting).

For the Avalanche Guard I decided that the grey slapchop would give the models to rocky look I was going for with just red trousers and an orange belt to bring them into the Phoenix army.  With them in the third photo is Isawa Kaede the master of the void.

The final photograph is a unit of Shiba House Guard, I’ve painted these to match Shiba Tsukune.

This post marks the point where I have finally got over half-way through the project and nearly past the two-thirds point.  The storage has also had to expand to allow for the next few batches of miniatures so rather than one GW three layer case it now has two (good job I had an empty one in the cave).

The downside to today’s post is that there will be a delay in getting these on a show table as their opponents aren’t going to be completed.  On the upside it gives me the time and opportunity to build out the army and add my test of honour miniatures into the Phoenix Clan.

Rather slower in terms of painting this week compared to last week.

I did manage to finish painting the 4 Isawa Elite Pikeman (unfortunately I only have 4 as they are very nice figures), along with Isawa Tadaka (Master of Earth) and Isawa Uona (Master of Air).  I continued with the grey slapcop method as it allows the colours to look brighter and as before keeps the yellow yellow.  The Orange is Speed Paint Fire Giant Orange, the yellow is Contrast Ironjaw Yellow, whilst the red is Baal Red.

I haven’t mentioned my basing yet.  I start with a coat of Vallejo Dark Earth Texture paint, which then gets a drybrush of Vallejo Dark Sand.  To finish off I add a piece of Army Painter Mountain Rocks basing which I’ve had around for this project for a long time.  The tufts, with and without flowers are from Debris of War.

A busy week for painting, I finished off the 8 Firestorm and Isawa Tsuke and then started on painting 4 Earth Elementals, 4 Void Guard and Shiba Ujimitsu.

The Earth Elementals figures don’t look very earthy and acutally look some of the nicest samurai figures in the collection, as such I decided I wanted to paint them as humans wearing stone armour.  To get this to work I decided to switch up the slap chop for this batch and dropped the black out, I started with a base of Halford Grey Primer (pretty much the same colour as AP Uniform Grey), then drybrushed Vallejo Sky Grey and finally a lighter dry brush of white.  This has two benefits, 1 it allows the colours to be brighter and 2 stops the greening of the yellow in the deepest shades.  I left the armour of the elementals unpainted as such so they show the original shades of the grey slapchop.  The rest of the colours are fairly standard with my army.  The Void Guard are a little different, I went with Contrast Nighthaunt Gloom for the most part with metallics to finish off.

Onwards with the Phoenix we go, this time with painting a block of 8 Isawa Inquisitors and Shiba Rushu.  I coudn’t find any art to help me with Shiba Rushu so this is based on someone else’s paint job.

The slapchop method continues with a prime of AP Chaos Black, drybush of AP Uniform Grey and then Matt White.  I had a bit of experimenting with this batch, the orange clothes are AP Fire Giant Orange speed paint, highlights on Rushu are the Fire Giant Orange with a bit of Vallejo Lemon Yellow, they mix well.  The Yellow robes on the Inquisitors are an interesting story.  I tried Iyanden Yellow, but it came out  too orange for my liking and the Bad Moon Yellow was too bright – I ended up mixing these two paints to get the colour I wanted.  The skin went wrong it turned out too dark as I hadn’t hit enough of the skin with the white drybrush, so most of the figures went with Citadel Kislev Flesh and then Gulliman Flesh as a wash over the top.  The hats are Citadel Aggaros Dunes, which is the bit I am happiest with.

Next up are the Firestorm along with the Master of Fire himself Isawa Tsuke

Ok, if you’re watching the maths you’ll notice a slight error on my part (might be more to come as well!).  I realised that my tracking system was missing two miniatures for the Phoenix, fortunately one of them was painted.

This week I have managed to paint the remaining 6 of the Archers and 6 Infantry to give me units of 12 for each.  I’ve also painted Shiba Tsukune, the first character in this spring clean challenge.

So painting the archers and infantry – black primer, drybrush with AP Uniform Grey and then a drybrush of AP Matt White (Slapchop method).  The cloth is then contrast Bad Moon Yellow and the armour contrast Baal Red, skin is contrast Gulliman Flesh.

For Shiba Tsukune I used contrast Gryph Hound Orange for the top, contrast Baal Red for the trousers and contrat Blood Angels Red for the armour.  This was then highlighted using a base of P3 Khador Red Highlight, with a bit of Vallejo Lemon Yellow for the top and AP Pure Red for the trousers.  The cuffs on the top are contrast Black Legion, with a drybrush of white to catch the symbols and then a drybrush of Vallejo Lemon Yellow to help them stand out.

Basing on these is Vallejo Earth Texture – Dark Earth, with a drybrush of Vallejo Dark Sand and then some AP Mountain Rocks and tufts from Debris of War.

Next up is Shibu Rushu and a block of Isawa Inquisitors.

I’ve realised that this game is so old that it isn’t even listed in the games list for the project choices.  If you never played Clan War from AEG, then join the club – I can’t remember playing it particularly mind you I never had much of my army complete.  As it stood last week I had 165 miniatures for my Phoenix army of which 13 were painted.  The club has decided that this might be a game to put on for the next Broadside show in June so I need to get on with painting the army.  Since I painted the others Contrast paints have come along so it is a slight change in paint scheme for these guys.  I started painting them in my year long project, so here is the link to the first post about the Phoenix and my trial in slapchop https://www.beastsofwar.com/project-entry/1807896/

My eldest has decided to help me out so progress should be quick.

So as of 27th March there are 25 miniatures painted.