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Tag Archive Mantic

Tutorial: Painting KoW Armada Empire of Dust Monolith

Welcome to Painting Empire of Dust Monolith tutorial. Here I will present to you a Step-by-step of an easy and fast painting process for Mantic Games Empire of Dust Monolith as can be seen in Gallery: Armada Empire of Dust.

Before we start, some notes:

  • This tutorial require airbrush.
  • You can use any paints, not just the ones I recommend. You can use this chart to compare paints between different brands.
  • Please note pictures present a huge miniature under strong light that might result in a feel of messy and clumsy paint job.
  • As usual, please take note that what works for me might not necessarily work for you.

Step one: Undercoat

I started with a thorough layer of Games Workshop Chaos Black spray.

Step two: Deck

I airbrushed Vallejo Khaki (air) over main deck and all top structures. I then flatbrushed GW Flayed One Flesh on top of Khaki layer. 

 

Step three: Broadside

I airbrushed Vallejo Panzer Dark Grey (air), followed by a layer of Vallejo Cold Grey (air). 

 

Step four: Gold

I then painted front and side ornaments, plus some additional detail with GW Warplock Bronze, followed by a solid flatbrush of P3 Molten Bronze and a highlight of Army Painter Shining Metal.

 

Step five: Wash

I then applied a lot of wash mix of Army Painter Strong Tone Ink 1:1 Army Painter Soft Tone Ink.
(If you followed my other tutorials you know at this point that the mixture is one of my very best friends in all painting.)

 

Step six: Main highlights

Once wash was dry I drybrushed broadsides with Vallejo Medium Sea Grey and then with Vallejo Ghost Grey. (I forgot to take pics). I then flatbrushed deck and top structure elements with GW Flayed One Flesh and edge highlighted with Vallejo Off White.

 

Step seven: Blue

I added accents of blue by manually painting chosen elements with Vallejo Magic Blue (air). I then highlighted with Vallejo Electric Blue, followed with Vallejo Glacier Blue. Furthermore I applied a wash layer of GW Guilliman Blue (glaze). Finally I added points of focus and thin highlights with Vallejo Glacier Blue. 

 

Step Eight: Purple/Pink

I applied Vallejo Warlock Purple onto chosen areas, including top gem, piramid inner lines and catapult flames. I then applied couple successive highlights with different mixes of Vallejo Warlock Purple and Vallejo Off White. With few highlights made with pure Vallejo Off White I moved to glaze Army Painter Purple Tone Ink into few areas of choice. This was contained mostly to top gem and recesses in catapult flames (and around). 

 

Such prepared miniature I airbrushed with two coats of Vallejo Polyurethane Matt Varnish and mounted on a base, following Tutorial: KoW Armada Water Bases


I hope you find this tutorial interesting. Be sure to let me know your thoughts in the comments below or via Facebook or Instagram. I would also appreciate if you considered sharing this content with your friends, who might find it useful. Finally if you are looking for a professional miniatures painting service be sure to contact me with this contact form. I always reply within 24 hours, after which please check out your spam folder.

Colour Recipes: KoW Armada Empire of Dust

Here are some Colour Recipes for Kings of War: Armada Empire of Dust from Gallery: Armada Empire of Dust. Please take note that this is a simple colour scheme, not covering multiple overlapping layers and blends in between, that lead to the final product. It is supposed to be used as guideline not a step-by-step.

GREY hulls:

Panzer Dark Grey (val), *

Cold Grey (val), *

Mix: Strong Tone Ink (ap) 1:1 Soft Tone Ink (ap),

Medium Sea Grey (val), drbr

Ghost Grey (val), drbr


BRIGHT BROWN decks:

Khaki (val), *

Flayed One Flesh (gw), flbr

Mix: Strong Tone Ink (ap) 1:1 Soft Tone Ink (ap),

Flayed One Flesh (gw), l&p

WHITE sails:

Khaki (val), *

Wolf Grey (val), *

White (val), *


GOLD ornaments:

Tin Bitz (gw),

Molten Bronze (p3), flbr

Shining Metal (ap), l&p

Mix: Strong Tone Ink (ap) 1:1 Soft Tone Ink (ap),

Shining Metal (ap), l&p

BLUE ornaments:

Magic Blue (val),

Electric Blue (val), flbr

Glacier Blue (val), l&p

Blue Tone Ink (ap),

Glacier Blue (val), l&p


PINK Flames:

Warlord Purple (val),

Mix: Warlord Purple (val) 2:1 Off White (val), flbr

Off White (val), l&p

Purple Tone Ink (ap), wash

l&p – lines and points,

p – points,

dl – deep lining,

bl – blend,

gl – glaze,

drbr – drybrush,

fltbr – flatbrush,

lobr – loaded brush,

stpl – stippling,

*Airbrushed (with multiple layers and mixes)

Tutorial: Painting KoW Armada Dwarf Fleet

Welcome to Painting KoW Armada Dwarf Fleet tutorial. Here I will present to you a Step-by-step of an easy and fast painting process for Mantic’s Armada Dwarfs as can be seen in Gallery: Armada Dwarfs.

Before we start, some notes:

  • This tutorial does not require airbrush.
  • You can use any paints, not just the ones I recommend. You can use this chart to compare paints between different brands.
  • Please note pictures present a huge miniature under strong light that might result in a feel of messy and clumsy paint job.
  • As usual, please take note that what works for me might not necessarily work for you.

Step one: Undercoat

I started with a thorough layer of Games Workshop Chaos Black spray. This is a standard procedure for me. Chaos Black spray is my go to choice when it comes to undercoat. 

Step two: Armor

I painted entire ship with slightly thinned Games Workshop Warplock Bronze. Once Warplock Bronze dried I flatbrushed entire miniature with Army Painter Gun Metal followed by another flatbrush, this time Army Painter Shining Silver. Finally I painted few elements with P3 Blighted Gold. 

Step three: Red

Next I added some color to the ship by painting roof and side balcony elements with Vallejo Burnt Red which was in turn highlighted with a single layer of Vallejo Flat Red.

Step four: Wash

I richly applied Army Painter Strong Tone Ink onto entire miniature. The paint might be glossy depending on particular pot you got. I recommend adding just a bit of Matt Varnish before use.

Step five: Highlights

With wash dried out nicely I applied a layer of Vallejo Flat Red in most exposed red areas. I then followed with edge highlights and few lines/dots of  Games Workshop Lugganath Orange. I then done the same for gold except I used GW Auric Armour Gold. For silver I went back to Army Painter Shining Silver, highlighting few exposed spots and edges.

Step six: Front slots

I decided to add additional touch to the front of the ship, by painting two frontal slots blue. I done this by applying a layer of thinned GW Fenrisian Grey and then a wash of GW Contrast Ultramarines Blue

Step seven: Basing

In simple terms I followed my own tutorial for Armada Basing, that you may find HERE, except I used standard hdf bases painted with a single layer of Vallejo UK Mediteranean Blue, followed by standard AK Interactive Pacific Blue, AK Interactive Water Effect and AK Interactive Water Foam textures. 

I hope you find this tutorial interesting. Be sure to let me know your thoughts in the comments below or via Facebook. I would also appreciate if you considered sharing this content to any groups or forums, where it might help someone paint their miniatures. Scarhandpainting is not just about professional miniatures painting service. I do my best to provide interesting tutorials and share my experience with other hobbyists. 

Tutorial: Water Bases for Armada

Welcome to Kings of War Armada Water Bases tutorial. Here I will take you on a Step-by-step trip through the process of creating and painting bases as can be found in the Gallery: Armada Basileans from Mantic Games Kings of War Armada.

Before we start, some notes:

  • I put aside realism and focused on simplicity and rule of cool instead.
  • As usual, please take note that what works for me might not necessarily work for you.

Introduction:

I plan to go all-in with Mantic’s KoW: Armada. This means a lot of ships from across numerous fleets. To keep my bases easy to paint and visually coherent I decided to limit myself to some water effects and simple tricks. Instead of going through a lot of effort, trying to build multiple layers of transparent water, I switched out standard MDF bases for clear acrylics. 
That doesn’t mean the method wouldn’t work with MDF’s. If you’d rather stick with Mantic’s bases – undercoat them white, then paint sides with some dark blue and you’d be ready to go. That being said, this method was developed with clear acrylic bases in mind so please take that into account when trying different approaches. 

The process:

Without further ado, let’s get these bases wet!
I used:

  • Pacific Blue Water Gel from AK Interactive Diorama Series
  • Water Foam from AK Interactive Diorama Series 
  • Water Gel effects from AK Interactive Diorama Series
  • White paint
  • Clear acrylic bases

Step one:

I used a large brush to apply AK Interactive Diorama Series: Pacific Blue Water Gel onto entire surface of the base. I then stippled a bit to create an uneven surface. Lastly I used a finger to remove the excess gel from the sides of the base.

Step two:

I repeated first step two more times, leaving the paint to dry between each repeat. This darkened the base significantly and resulten in a nice solid layer with a lot more detail on top of the first one.

Step three:

Once I was done painting ships I applied AK Interactive Pacific Blue Gel at the edges of each ship’s underside. I then followed with Super Glue through the middle and glued the ship on top of a base. Excess gel was queezed out and filled any holes between the ship and the base.

Step four:

I then applied more Pacific Blue Gel around the ship. It was a bit messy so I used a clean flat brush to move any excess gel from the ship’s sides and onto the base.

Step five:

Some time later I applied AK Interactive clear Water Gel effects around the ship. I used a small brush and slowly built the mass of splashing water at the front and on the sides of the ship. This time I didn’t care about messing up the hull.

Step six:

Next I applied AK Interactive Water Foam. Using a small brush I applied small dots of the effect on top of previous layer. This one is very white so I tried to avoid applying to much. Mistakes were removed with a clean flat brush – pushed into more tight lines, where necessary.

Step seven:

Lastly I mixed white paint, water and AK Interactive clear Water Gel effect and stippled a bit behind and around the ship to create a nice effect of dissolving water foam. 

Task complete! The fleet is now sailing into the unknown. I hope you like this tutorial. For more pictures of finished fleet visit Gallery: Armada Basileans

Be sure to let me know your thoughts on the method either in the comments below or at my facebook profile

Please link this tutorial to anyone who likes to learn new hobby tricks. 

Lastly I also invite you to follow me at Instagram, where I drop some nice pictures from time to time.

All speed ahead and see you in the next article!

Review: Mantic Kings of War: Armada Ships

Mantic Games – a UK based company made up of hobby enthusiasts that brought about such titles as Deadzone, Kings of War and Warpath into the tabletop wargaming world. On top of that the company released some successful board game titles including Hellboy, The Walking Dead and DreadBall just to name a few. Just recently Mantic Games released a brand new Kings of War: Armada – a game of sea battles set in the already established world of Kings of War’s Pannithor. Today I would like to take you on a short cruise through two Armada sets – an Orc Booster Fleet and a Basilean Booster Fleet – to see how the miniatures present themselves straight from the box. Grab the railing and let’s set sail into the unknown!

I would like to move away from the usual Quality, Visuals, Functionality etc. review format. This time around I will go ship-by-ship with a summary at the end. Let’s get started!

Basileans:

First set to go is Basileans. I love the design of Basilean ships and decided this will be my main fleet. Purchased seven sets in total so you see I’m pretty serious about this. Anyhow – the design is great and each individual ship has a lot of character. Basilean ships seem a bit high fantasy, but also look realistic enough to feel like real ships. 

Gur Panther

Elohi

Slopes

Impressions:

Basilean set is impressive but not without issues. The Gur Panther and Slopes are of a very good quality with crisp detail, just few air bubbles. Elohi in the other hand turned out to be damaged (hull part missing one lantern) and with one mast below expected quality. Anything between bent and air bubbles I have no issues with. This is to be expected with resin models and is easy to deal with. Damaged parts and miscasts are something entirely else and I will be placing a complaint about the Elohi. I can’t stop but wander if this is a rare occurrence, or is this something Quality Control accepted as a valid product.

Orcs

Time for some Orcs! Amongst humans, dwarves and undead, the Orc ships stand out as ragtag, crude, scrap-built hulks. This seems classic Orcs, regardless of what game you’re coming from, and I like this about Mantic – they go “classic” a lot. 

Hammerfist

Blood Runner

Rabble Squadron

Impressions:

Except for one shifted casting sail and some bent masts, this set turned out to be of a very good quality. A lot of uneven detail clearly forced Mantic to divide the sculpts into more parts – some cannons and hull elements being packed on their own. Everything fits though and I can say this is the quality I would expect from such a set. No issue beyond standard miniature preparation to deal with.

Price:

Kings of War: Armada stuck me as a rather cheap to get into. With two players set priced at 90€, Booster and Starter Fleet both being 40€ and an additional large Ship being 20€ you’re looking at a pretty low entry point. You can get into the game for about 50€. Furthermore you can get to an entire fleet with backup models for about 100-150€ more. Seems very well priced for a full skirmish tabletop game experience.

Booster Fleet price of 40€ for four resin ships (six to be precise, but four playable miniatures) is a legit price, especially taking into account these are large resin miniatures. 

Summary:

I won’t lie – I’m totally biased towards this product. I’m hyped for the game to a point where I ordered couple sets on top of a huge pre-order, just to get them few days before the main order arrival. There are clearly some issues with particular parts which I hope will get resolved. Either way a rating is required of me thus on a scale where 10 is awesome, 8 is good, 6 is ok, 5 is mediocre, 3 is bad and I don’t want to even mention 1 – I’d say Kings of War: Armada Booster Fleet sets are a solid 8 plus. They rub on “awesome” and are of much higher quality than most resin miniatures I worked with up to now. What’s your thoughts? Is this rating fair, or do you disagree? Let me know in the comments below. Cheers!

Where to buy:

Mantic Online Store is the way to go. 

Alternatively if you’re from Poland – I highly recommend any of these two stores: Vanaheim / Minibitwa

Tutorial: Kings of War Armada Islands

Welcome to Kings of War Armada Islands tutorial. Here I will take you on a Step-by-step trip through the process of creating and painting DiY islands scenery for Mantic Games Kings of War Armada as presented in the picture below.

Before we start, some notes:

  • This one requires airbrush.
  • I put aside realism and focused on simplicity and rule of cool instead.
  • As usual, please take note that what works for me might not necessarily work for you.

Modelling:

Playing a friendly game on a set of fully painted and modeled scenery is  always a great experience. In my opinion there’s nothing better than to let yourself go “full immersion mode” during a game of plastic dudesmen, or in this case – resin boats. That’s why I decided to create a set of appropriate scenery and use this opportunity to let you in on some of my hobby secrets.

When planning the set and how to make it my priorities were ease of build (and copy), durability, stability and obviously cool looks! Thus choice of material being mostly PCV and stones. PCV sheets are easy to work with, stay flat and are very glue friendly, whereas stones provide cheap and easy to use terrain features that will add weight and improve stability of the scenery pieces. With that in mind – let’s begin!

Step one: Basic shapes

I started by cutting a island’s base out of 1mm thick PCV sheet with a pair of scissors. I then smoothed the edges with a piece of sandpaper.
Next, using a hobby knife, I cut the island itself. This time I used 3mm thick PCV and cut the edges at a 30-45* angle, leaving approximately 1,5cm of the base all around the island. Once done I glued both pieces together, using Army Painter’s Super Glue.

Step two: Rocky features

I then applied PVA glue to some areas on the island, followed by AP’s Super Glue and finally Rocks – repositioned to look interesting. I also added some bitz, but I leave it up to you to decide if you want to do the same.

Step three: Wooden piers

Next I decided to add a bit of character with an old, damaged wooden pier jutting into the sea. I used a piece of MDF cut into a thin strip as a base for the pier, but you can really use anything – including 1mm thick PCV. Just cut a strip, glued tiny bit underneath, then glued it on top of the island and it’s base. Finally marked tiny holes along the sides of the pier and ‘superglued’ toothpicks in place, just to cut them off close to the pier’s level. Done.

Step four: Palm trees

At that point I didn’t wanted to waste good toothpicks and here’s where palm trees idea originates from. I gently squeezed the blunt tip of a toothpick with cutters and moved it around. I made this every two or so mm on the length of the toothpick. I then cut a piece off and gently bent it. With palm trees trunks ready to be added on top to the island, I just pushed a sharp tool into the PCV to create tiny holes and glued the trunks into it.

Step five: Textures

Final modelling step was to apply textures. First I filled gaps and surrounding areas between stones with AK Interactive Concrete from diorama series. I then covered rest of the island with Vallejo Desert Sand texture.

Painting:

Sandy beaches, rocky coast and vibrant blue water around. With such theme in mind I started the paint job. 

Basics:

First step was to undercoat the islands black and then airbrush white all over it to create a nice base for both water and sand colors. 

Sand:

Sand was painted using airbrushed Vallejo Desert Sand, followed by Light Brown and finally drybrushed with Ice Yellow.

Rocks:

Rocks followed with a similarly easy recipe being airbrushed Vallejo Dark Panzer Grey, Cold Grey, Pale Grey Blue and drybrushed Ghost Grey.

Water:

Here’s the tricky one. I decided to go hard with stencil airbrushed Vallejo Light Sea Blue, Magic Blue and spots of airbrushed Army Painted Blue Ink. I then sealed it with airbrushed Gloss Varnish.

Final touches:

I added some final touches by manually applied AK Interactive effects creating waves and water foam. To add a nice color diversity on top of the island I also applied Gamers Grass Dry Green and Swamp tufts. Pal trees got finished with Shady Green tufts from Paint Forge.

First two islands discovered, I’m ready to head up for the unknown waters. More scenery to come, following the same template. If you stick a while at my blog you’re bound to see more islands and other scenery types, including deadly rocks and shipwrecks. Be sure to visit Scarhandpainting next time you hit a port! Ahoy!

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