Corrupting the youth - or is it the other way round?

Mini-Rab #1 had just started at a new school and, as a way of getting to know the other kids, has joined almost every club going - a bit like a university fresher, but without the alcohol-fuelled excess. I hope. He is only nine!

Why is that relevant to this blog? Well, one of the clubs he's joined is run by his science teacher and seems to be a general "geek club", including lego robotics... and Warhammer 40k in its latest incarnation. Yes, despite my best efforts, he is desperate to join in as they push hordes of unpainted, badly glued lumps of expensive grey plastic around. Fortunately I had a squad of kroot in a box and his automatic assumption was that he'd paint them "at least a bit" before they saw table time to see if he likes the game. He wants to paint for about an hour each weekend until they're finished, so they're a bit more painted each week as he plays with them. Good lad! Perhaps 8th Ed will float his boat, perhaps oldhammer will keep him - as long as he's playing with his friends, and will indulge me in my oldschool gaming preferences from time to time, and having fun, who cares?

So, he sprayed...

The red dwarf and the blue dwarf had a race

I've long been an ardent admirer of how Blue in VT paints, in particular the smoothness he gets on his multi-coloured chaos dwarfs. Now, that smoothness is not really my style (and is beyond my current skills anyway), but I did draw on them for inspiration for these two short and wicked fellows.

They are from Clam's Eval Dwergar range and they were a delight to paint, even if they were a bugger to photograph. My chaos dwarf contingent is made up from about a dozen from this range, a couple of old Citadel (pre-big hat), and a couple from CP models. I think they go well together while retaining a nicely chaotic level of variation.

Here are the first two:

Beastlord

The warband I've got planned and am, theoretically at least, working on this year includes an eighteen-strong beastman horde. Every chaos troupe should have beastmen in my opinion, the gibbering and varied (not just goat-headed) pack just screams chaos to me. Of course, they're led by the biggest and toughest of the lot; law of the jungle chaos wastes, innit?

I chose this brute sold by Viking Forge miniatures in the US as that leader:

He's listed as "FM-27 Giant Armoured Troll" and was originally an Asgard Miniatures sculpt. Asgard is about as Oldhammer as you can get, or Protohammer I suppose. Founded by Bryan Ansell, Steven Fitzwater and Paul Sulley in Nottingham in 1976, they had Bryan himself, Nick Bibby and Jes Goodwin (I think) as sculptors. Bryan left in 1978 for a little outfit called Citadel Miniatures; you may have heard of them. Several Asgard miniatures appeared in very early White Dwarf magazines.

History lesson over, you can still buy several of these highly characterful sculpts from Alternative Armies in the UK and Viking Forge in the US. Check out the Chaos and Barbarian ranges in particular, there are some real gems in there. More info here and here.

On to my take on this fellow, my first paintjob in months. An absolute pleasure to paint, full of character but none of the excessive details that clutter some modern sculpts. One thing that did surprise me was the carefully moulded... equipment... that I discovered just about poking out below the level of his mail skirt. The horror...

Apologies for the dodgy phone photos with added shine and flattened highlights.

So, he'll now lead the horde, with three WIP beasts and the banner bearer still bare metal. Getting there!

Beeeeef!

I've been slowly getting my painting mojo back, and decided to get out my wet-palette and the matt-medium to have a go with thinner paints and intermediate tones. I use mostly Foundry triads, but the step between the shades on some colours (especially flesh) is too stark for my taste, so a little blending is needed alongside a touch more boldness with the brush, perhaps.

Anyway, this in-progress minotaur is the result of that fiddling about to date:

I think he's coming along nicely so far. One thing that surprised me with this sculpt was finding that he's wearing gloves,which I guess I'll paint black or very dark blue with the leather studded armour in black. Opinions are very welcome! The mechanical left hoof will get some classic black'n'white checks and some plain steel.

Let me know what you think,
Rab

Holiday bits'n'bobs

I always have grand plans for the holidays - all those hours I won't be at work, all that time to get on and do some hobby stuff, rather than just doing it exhaustedly and vicariously in late night internet bursts.

Yeah.

Right.

Those "free" hours soon get filled. Some of it with pleasurable things (actually spending time with my family, going walking, reading, a museum or art gallery or two), and some of it with chores that have built up (I'm typing this with paint-flecked fingers, not from geeking, but from repainting what feels like half the house).

Nevertheless, some geeking has happened:

There has been a lot more Talisman from the boys (I've introduced the City expansion, next up, the Dungeon)

I made some tentative steps forward on my Chaos Army project which rather stalled for personal reasons over the last two months and needs to be radically accelerated if I'm going to get even close to completing it in 2017. I do have a backup plan involving a giant to reach the points target with less painting...

Actually, that minotaur lord on the left is nearly done now, and I'll post him when he's finished.

Toodles,
Rab

First knight nerves

As the amount of time I have to actually sit down and get into the painting groove is so limited, I often am put off starting miniatures in case I make a balls-up of it. The thought of having to start again is so unappealing that I'd then be stuck with a figure that looks a bit poo. Or, more accurately, with a half-painted figure gathering dust that looks a bit poo.

However, if I'm going to complete my self-imposed challenge of completing this army this year, there's no time for (more) dithering. This is the result:

Chaos kniggits

Keen eyes may notice that the header for this, and future, Chaos Army 2017 project posts is a quick cut'n'shunt job on the way that Dale Hurst's eye-catching warband was presented in White Dwarf 135.

Readers of previous posts, particularly from when I chopped about some bits to make a demon, will know how inspirational that article was for me, so it seemed only right to keep a touch of that as I expand the warband into a whole 3,000 point army over the course of this year.

So far I have units/individual characters painted to a total of 907 points. There are also several figures painted for other units, but I'll only count them when the whole unit is done, including bases, shields, and banners. I'm going to be strict!

The next unit up for sharing (although you'll soon see that they are bare metal/plastic/putty) are the most expensive, points-wise, and therefore I wanted to do something special with them - the knights. I have them as "chaos warriors" mounted on "chaos steeds" so my bitzbox was brought into play. In the end I left the riders as they came, but I didn't want a full unit mounted on normal horses, it didn't seem fitting.

The start of something chaotic

This year, as you may have read in my plans for 2017 post, I aim to turn my motley collection of painted and unpainted lead into a fully functioning (i.e. painted, based, shielded and bannered) army of 3,000 points for 3rd edition Warhammer Fantasy Battle. I've decided to go for generic Chaos as per the main rulebook, although it will have a blue and yellow Tzeentchian theme, and a wizard on flying disc for flavour.

I own all the models needed to complete this task, and have assembled and/or converted almost all of them to the stage where they are ready for undercoating. This then, is The Plan, with a couple of old photos of models already done: