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

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:

Random results without tables

Now, I love a random table as much as the next nerd. Whether it is a simple d6 affair to select a scenario when you want a quick pick-up game that isn't just "line up and fight", or pre-battle weather effects, or the warped and contradictory glory that is the interlinked set of tables of GW's 1988/90 Realm of Chaos warband generator:

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:

Tidying up loose ends

Some people (myself included) like to tidy the house up before Christmas. This year, while washes are drying on those skeleton horses, I've extended that to part-finished and languishing models.

These two have sat on the shelf above my painting desk, nearly finished, since before the summer. It was time to put that right. I don't know what range the first miniature is from, but the second is an Asgard barbarian, "Beasthelm", who has had the edges of his armour greenstuffed over to give him an actual beast head.

Thug life

What do you get if you make an unholy mixture of evil magicks, Black Friday shoppers, the school dinner queue on the day they serve chips, and hardcore football hooliganism before representing it in miniature form? Why, chaos thugs of course!

Now, Whiskey Priest has written extensively (don't worry, there are pictures too) on this subject already, so I shan't duplicate his efforts even if I have reused the title, but instead show you the start of the dregs of my RoC warband. He's an early Citadel Fighter, but that gurning face called instead for blue skin and a tiger pelt cloak. Obviously.

Into the West

So in the morning Mrs Rab, the two mini-Rabs and I will be starting the seven-hundred-and-twelve hour drive down to the far tip of Cornwall (leaving Castle Rab well guarded, naturally) for what I hope will be a fabulous holiday. Sun, sea, cliffs, stone monuments both ancient and industrial, maybe even a dolphin or two. Plenty of Clannad and Show of Hands for the car, because folk. Lovely.

But, I hear you cry, what about geeking? Fear not, I have packed some Stuff for evenings or wet days. Taking a leaf out of Asslessman's book, I've got tools and bitz for making up another couple of chaos centaurs, as well as some medium-sized models that will probably need filing and gap-filling. If the putty mood doesn't take me I've also packed some squared paper and my notebook to extend Averaigne for a September restart.

On the other hand I might just eat fish and pasties, drink wine and beer, and skim stones into the ocean at dusk. Decisions, decisions...

New toys

Despite a spot of digital gaming via fumbbl (snuck in another clean-sheet win against ogres last night thanks to Nuffle hating the poor chap), I'm keeping my geeking as analogue as possible with some D&D yesterday afternoon, and a few toys I ordered last month which arrived yesterday and today.

First, the French Oldhammer day figure arrived from Bruno Galice (of Via Ludibunda miniatures). I think He was responsible for casting them but I'm a little embarrassed that I don't know the sculptor and Nico sculpted him (thanks for the info, airbornegrove). A lovely little chaos dwarf to join the others I'm picking up from various places to form a unit for both Dragon Rampant and my Oldhammer chaos warband.

The other package was a bit more bittersweet. More sweet goblins from the excellent Crooked Claw range of (mostly) Kev Adams sculpts. Bitter, because Michael is closing up shop and these are some of the last there will be... until the range gets a new owner.

I also got a box. What's in the box? Something I've been sent to review! Check me out, internet commentator and everything. Ha! Let's just say it's bloodbowl related, and I'll do a proper post and review at some point over the next week or so.

Leave a comment if you know who sculpted that dwarf,
Rab

Fresh from the jar

Whew! Busy week! Nevertheless, some geeking happened. I've picked the models I'm going to paint this month and got them pretty much prepped (four beastmen to take me up to twelve for a full Dragon Rampant unit of Bellicose Foot, and the two Ral Partha skeleton ogres to give me some Heavy Foot for my undead DR warband). I had intended to paint last night but after a couple of clumsiness incidents went for clearing out my ice cream tub of stripping models. Quite a variety, it turns out!

What can you spot?

I did at least get to continue our Swords & Wizardry Averaigne campaign this afternoon. Details to follow.

Enjoy your weekend,
Rab

Look, Ma, it's my thumb!

A couple of quick interim snaps until I take a handful of decent pictures. These are the latest two additions to my unit of chaos warriors. Obviously at some point I'll paint a banner to hang from the pole. The tentacle arm is from a maxmini mutation sprue used to replace the arm that was missing before I got hold of him, and the banner pole was made from a variety of bits from old plastic beastman and chaos warrior sprues.

Oh yeah, and my thumb - it was time to unleash it's perfectly manicured glory upon the internet. You were finally ready.

Rab

Colourful chaos collective

I've been carrying on (slowly!) with my haphazard approach to developing my chaos troops into a usable gaming force - I rummage through the bits I have and paint the one that catches my eye! Not exactly a purposeful and organised way of going about it, but perhaps fitting for the subject matter.

So, this time it was a couple of chaos warriors. The first from the inimitable Asslessman (hence the Gallic colours, suitably and chaotically rearranged), the next because he was the one that fell out of the box while I rummaged. To give them a bit of magical bite, I also painted up a CP Models fox-headed wizard. My plan is to have nine warriors and a wizard - seems Tzeentchian enough to me.

Roar!

Progress on the warband continues with a minotaur, the first of three that are needed to bring my RoC band up to their paper strength. I'm pleased with how he turned out, especially after an early setback when I didn't mix the base flesh tone properly and it separated slightly on the model. Lesson learned!

I'm still fiddling about with how to use my new light tent with the camera I have. Simply by twisting the setting dial on the top, changing nothing else, gave me all these variations!

Crazy, huh?

A round up of the gang so far

I'm still playing around with using a black background, as well as the black magic that is "curves" in photoshop, and decided to use my expanding Tzeentch warband for practice. The setting for them is my newest toy, a proper photo tent thing that I was tempted into getting by Alex Haworth on the FB page in our discussion about a coffee table book of Oldhammer miniatures (more on that in future posts, you can be certain!).

It's 50cm across which gives plenty of space to fit in a whole bunch of figures. That said, I nearly didn't post these pictures as I was too impatient to recharge batteries for a proper camera (somebody ran it flat and didn't say...) and just used my rather shoddy phone camera. Still, it was nice to put them all alongside each other and see how far I'm getting along.

Sorcerer of Tzeentch

Another finished model - I'm on a roll!

So far no-one has been able to identify the figure for me; do you have any ideas?

Thanks,
Rab

Centaur - complete

Ok, it's a slightly blurry shot now that I've put it onto the computer, but just think of him galloping across the chaos wastes without a care in the world...

It's my first experiment with a black background and I rather like it.

More soon.
Rab

Little and often

Yeah baby - it's that time when I regather the scattered vestiges of my tolerance and humanity from the chaos of secondary education... just in time for next term!