Hobby | Taking a Bite out of the New Year

Tired puns aside, I had a really good time painting this shark. Does it make sense? No, not really no. I like Age of Sigmar, a lot, but even I can admit that sometimes it gets a tad bit...weird. But I really like the Idoneth, so much so that I bought a whole army at once just to put them on a shelf and forget them. I've painted two heroes so far, but those were mostly tests to see how the paint scheme would work out. 

About a month ago, I had the chance to finally play a game. At 500 points, I thought, why not try out those Idoneth Deepkin? So I looked at the shelf, told myself I'd love to play a shark, and promptly realized it wasn't even glued to the base and the riders were separate to make painting easier. But not gaming easier. No, that would suck to play with. So I shelved that idea, literally, and moved over to my painted Nighthaunt to play with instead.

I hate the idea that I have models that I can't play with because they're in pieces. It irks me. I know I do it since sub-assemblies are just way easier to paint with, but it's lame to not play with your toys whenever you want. So here we are, I decided that wouldn't be the case anymore. Enter the shark, the very same that caused the frustration in the first place. 

Look at that smile!

This particular model is the Akhelian Allopex, a mid-sized monster in the Idoneth Deepkin faction. It's my first real test of my Idoneth paint scheme, as there were lots of armor panels to work with. It also was an eye opener for realizing that contrasting the blue-green scheme of the armor with the natural blue-grey skin tone of the shark would be difficult. Some extra edge-highlighting really helped out here, and so my paint scheme has gotten that much more refined. Always nice to work out the kinks. I'm starting to get a much better feel for how the army will look, as well as the order of painting to make it easier. 

I will say that I have two more of these still on the sprue, and I'm not exactly looking forward to painting them. I love the sculpt, I think it looks really good, but there's a few pain points when it comes to the painting, like the quiver for the arrows, the little stands that the "gunner" sits atop, and the edges between skin, leather, and armor. I found myself going back a lot to cover up Leather Brown (AP) that I accidentally got on the Wolf Grey (AP) skin. So that was annoying. 

On the other hand, painting the skin was a real treat, especially the transition between the pale underbelly and the blue top. Lots of glazing and stippling to get that look, and I especially love the stripes. Painting organic stuff like this can be really fun, and when I do get around to painting those other sharks I might go more fantastical. I'm thinking an orange skin would look really good when paired with the blue-green armor. 

As for the Hobby Bingo, I am on fire at this point. Two minis, two squares, this time the monster tile. It's a smaller monster, but a monster nonetheless. I'm looking forward to crushing a big chunk of this card, then failing to get any bingos by the end of the year. 

I also added some orange lichen to the base to give it some more pop and not just look like patches of grass. I liked it so much that I went back and added it to my other Idoneth models. 

Heading out.

-The Space Dinosaur