A Dwarf

As the title suggests, I painted a dwarf.
A single,
lonely,
plain 'ol dwarf.

The finished dwarf.

This is odd since I had no true desire to paint any other dwarves, just had the urge to do this one. And more for a reference guide for myself I took pics of every stage of the painting. In case I actually do get the urge to do the whole army, I can look back on this post in case I forget what color-scheme I used.

Stage one. Base Coat. Dark Brown, Dark Angels Green, Tin Bitz, Delta Creamcoat Metallic Pewter ( I love this color!)

Stage two: Dwarf flesh, a dark green from the original Epic paint set, Hammered Copper from Game Color, and Calthan Brown Citadel Foundation (beard).

Stage three: Original Citadel Woodland Green, Ral Partha Copper Metallic (amazing that this is still good), and bronzed flesh. 

Stage four: Burnished Gold highlights, bleached bone and white for the eyes, and brown ink to pick out the beard ,

Final stage: Bolt gun metal on axe edge, Khemri brown foundation paint on the beard, a bit more burnished gold.,

Any to not keep out fella from feeling totally purposeless while I take the next while here contemplating whether or not I want to paint any more dwaves, I decided to give him a piece of the King's Wall (It should've been called the King's Rope Fence or something as it is hardly a wall).

Tin bitz on the metals, the darkest grey I could find in my collection for the stone.

A lighter gray. And a thinned Patina by Folk Art on the metal.

Tin Bitz mixed with shining gold for highlights on the helms,



Add flock, and done with both miniatures.

Honestly, I must confess to you, I really only painted these two models as a study for these guys!:

I didn't want to just randomly paint all that dwarf debris, now did I?
...Stay tuned!

"...they're rats."

Out of the sewers and into the night! The Skaven attack!

While working on my other-armies page last night (yes, it's updated now with more pics and comments about my other armies) instead of showcasing my Skaven models there I decided they needed their own blog entry.

I was really excited about Mordheim when it came out. I was always enthralled by the feel of the Warhammer World's background but never had the extra cash back in the '90s to be able to afford to get into the big game of Warhammer Fantasy Battle. Released in the fall of '99, Mordheim was a convenient answer to that dilemma as the skirmish level game simply required very few models to play with. Indeed the boxed set came with a ton of models! Mordheim was a great intro level game into the world of Warhammer and the background and art is some of the best GW has ever produced in my opinion. It had a similar post-game rewards system that Necromunda had. was easy to learn, and well, I was hooked.

At the time I was working at an arts&crafts store and they sold a xmas village set that was supported with all kinds of neat separately sold components. One such item was a brick road that works perfect for fantasy, and I ended up buying a lot of them. When it came time to paint up these models I sculpted the bricks onto their bases with green-stuff to go along with these roads. and figured out a paint scheme to match it. In hindsight, I could've just bought an extra road and cut it up and stuck it to the base but at the time I might've been concerned about the thickness of the road or the warped nature of it; These came rolled in a blister pack and it took many years to get them to flatten out properly. If I ever do more Skaven models I will likely attempt it.

The leader of my warband. I like the rat on his shoulder.

I am unsure of the location of my gang roster, so the names I had for these chaps are lost on me. I am sure they were probably semi-witty.

I still am impressed with how well this model turned out. The lightning effect on the staff was the first time I had ever attempted this effect.

 I lavished a lot of attention on the warlock, the leader and the rat-ogre. They were very fun to paint, and I am surprised it didn't lead to me collecting more Skaven models. I guess I was simply satisfied with these. I did buy more models for this warband, but after the first few games where my rat-ogre terrified my Empire opponent it was tough to find others to play with locally.

Am I the only one who thinks this model looks like he has catcher's mitts on?

 The rat ogre has to be on the most awkward poses I've ever seen modeled. But anatomically one of the better sculpted, especially at the time it was released. The early rat ogres where sort of fuggly. The arm on this model goes to together awkwardly and I had a hell of time trying to pin it. It was seamlessly connected at one point, even the join was eliminated with green-stuff, and then I dropped it while playing and although it never came apart again I have learned to not be too crazy attentive about joins and what-not with playing pieces to a game (vs. minis to paint for a competition) as the more time I lavish on it, the more likely I will bust it.


These basic guys where the 1st Skaven I painted, to see if I could, and I think they hold up well.

I'm still pleased with these models. I tried a lot of different paints to get a gritty, dirty and peasant-like look to them. I really wanted them to look like they were wearing rages and not the Christmas colors GW was painting their models in during the '90s (seriously, red claws? WTF?) Anyway, I was very pleased at the time and I think these paint jobs still hold up. I hope to be able to play Mordheim with them again. In recent years they have hit the table top as adversaries in my Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay campaign. My players love to kill rats while exploring the sewers of Middenheim! (hehehe).

Oh, and before I let you go, when trying to impress geek-chicks with your miniature painting skills, find out first if they have an aversion to rats or not...;)

100th post! The Chronicle of Oddgob

Hard to believe it, but this is my 100th post on this blog!

And to make it special, I decided to go all kinds of nostalgic with this one and reminisce about my goblin wizard, Oddgob.



A sketch from my game notes.

This model was painted some years ago, around 2005-2006 I think. At the time I absolutely had no intention or designs to build an Orc & Goblin army for Warhammer Fantasy Battle. Indeed, I was putting together an Empire army at the time, but I was actually painting D&D models when I could spare the time. Those were very busy times for me back then and much of my hobby time was immersed in writing and creating adventures for my D&D 3.5 campaign.


Nazgit Oddgob was not for one of my games however, as this was my player character in Warfrog's campaign. I decided I wanted to do something totally off-the-wall and different and play a goblin wizard! What made this even more exciting was that Warfrog had taken the time and effort to convert the classic D&D (i.e. "Basic") Known World and adapt the City of Glantri over to D&D 3.5. He has to have the largest collection of 1st edition D&D materials of anyone I know and is definitely an authority on the Known World (later Mystara). Glantri was quite impressive and worked very well in this new edition. It was a city state controlled and ran by wizards. Which, much to the other player's surprise, Oddgob the escaped slave goblin, found himself to be quite well-positioned for success in this place. And notoriety as well I suppose.

 




Pre-game history of Oddgob.

I made an exciting background for Oddgob to explain how he even became a 1st level wizard in the 1st place. Which is well and good as at the start of our first game all of us players found ourselves tossed into a gladiatorial arena for the amusement of the wizard nobles. It was more amusing for them (and shocking!) to see this lowly gobo magic missile his foe to death! He and his fellow winners were all purchased by a wizard lord named Lorin who immediately set about securing a license for practicing magic for Oddgob and enrolling formally into a  school of magic. Our group was sent all over the region performing missions for Lorin and gaining levels and gold.

As he gained levels, he also gained cockiness, and was particularly apt to show off and try to out perform (and wit) any of the elves in the city. Particularly the party's elf Viruiem. In fact, Oddgob only called Viruiem "Elf", refusing to acknowledge any other title. We fondly recall Oddgob shooting an adversary that was giving Viruiem a difficult time, with his hand crossbow and yelling out for all to hear in the Beavis voice I used for him "You owe me a life-debt Elf!" much to the annoyance of The Elf. At some point The Elf died and Oddgob was very distraught over having lost his favorite foil. There is more story here regarding that event however and I shall save it for another post...

 

Sketch from game notes. Why use a crossbow when you can magic-missile stuff to death?

 



Ready to lead on!

Eventually, after being trapped in a pocket dimension (The Enclave) and finally figuring out what it would take to escape it, we made our way back to Galantri. Oddgob was now powerful enough to take the final trial, which was his rite of passage to become a 10th level wizard. He passed the test, and that turned out to be the last game of this unique campaign.
 

In his display box.

We all were burned out on D&D 3.5 just as WotC released 4th ed, which we were all pissed about considering the amount of dough we dropped over the years for books that would become irrevocably obsolete! And we never returned to Galantri or these characters again. 

 

So flash-forward to now, and here I am building an Orc army for WHFB. And just last week I found the 7th Edition starter set in a local game store and at the original price! So, now I have accumulated a good sized Night Goblin force with the added bonus of already having a painted model to lead it!

 



When I painted this model, again, there was no thought of ever putting together a Warhammer army of goblins: he was strictly for D&D and the typical D&D goblin miniatures sort of sucked, let a lone finding one that was a wizard. And I have always loved this classic Brian Nelson sculpt. I added a Reaper Miniatures skull on the base to added a bit more of a dangerous element.

The bottom of the base is magnetized as well as the bottom of the display case which I made, quite simply, from a clear dice box. He doesn't move inside this case and I was able to transport him to and from Warfrog's house without getting a single scratch or chip on him. I did this for most of my D&D models actually as they were very individual and the typical transport methods that I use for my armies seemed like overkill at the time.

 

So Oddgob prepares for his next big adventure. While in that pocket dimension I mentioned earlier, he freed a group of goblins and convinced them to work in a mine that our party secured. I imagine that Oddgob would go back to that place and raise an army out of that collection of gobos and descend on another realm to take over. Because, well, why not? 

Chaos vs. Chaos

She-Who-Milks, and Giggles the Rotter wait for the moment of deployment

Tonight I played my first game since my birthday bash in the beginning of September. I decided to play something totally different. All summer long I have been yearning to try out Codex: Daemons, and sort of on the fly I decided to throw together a list to see what I could muster. Turns out my old list even with a few additional models still wasn't enough to get up to 1,500 points  and I didn't have the time or desire to throw together the rest of the unassembled army. So I took some marine options from the other codex I've been neglecting since it came out: Codex: Chaos Space Marines.

My assembled force.

 The assembled force is:
Primary Detachment: Daemons of  Chaos.

• She-Who-Milks (Keeper of Secrets)
• Giggles the Rotter (Great Unclean One)
• 10 Daemontes
• 2 Bases of nurglings
• 11 Plaguebearers
• 5 Fiends of Slaanesh

Secondary Detachement: Chaos Space Marines

• Gnarlstick the Sorcerer
• 5 Chaos Space Marines with Mark of Nurgle
• 5 Chaos Space Marines with Mark of Slaanesh
• 5 Chaos Bikers (one with flamer another with Meltagun).

This tallied up after wargear and upgrade options to being exactly 1,500 points. I kept the list strictly Nurgle & Slannesh for fluff purposes. Although the temptation to take some Tzeentch options was tough to resist.

So down at the local Hobbytown USA I met the gang for the weekly Saturday Evening game night and paired off against Rob. He was also running chaos, but with Space Marines as his Primary detachment. As this was my 1st outing with chaos in 6th edition Warhammer 40,000,  it was cool of him to show me the ropes of these "new" books. Particularly all the pre-game rolling I found myself doing at the start of the game as it was good to get his input on things. 

My Keeper of Secrets did well on her rolls but it was the Great Unclean One that really racked up on the tasty treats. The gift bestowed upon Giggles was Unbreakable Hide (3+ armor save which I forgot about as the game went on) and Corpulescence (+1 Wound and It will not Die! Sick combo on a GUO!). For Psychics I went all Biomancy and pulled Endurance, Iron Arm and Enfeeble). My Space Marine Sorcerer pulled Endurance as his one power.

What follows will be just the briefest of highlights as I was really having to much fun to make one of my more in-depth battle reports, as well as the fact that both our armies are unpainted, but I took a few snap-shots anyway because we were simply having a memorable game.

Attack of the nurglings!

 After proving how bad-ass Noise Marines are, I had to tie them up for a round by letting them tangle with the nurglings. Ultimately this would give Rob the First Blood VP as he punted the little snotballs all over the field.

Moving in the for kill

 First time I have ever used bikes in a unit this big. And we forgot all about Hammer of Wrath (face palm!). Our champions would be locked in a challenge for almost half the game I think. Eventually my champion won and received a fairly lame reward for his efforts. Rob's warlord would come join the fray and assist the surviving daemonettes out with slaughtering my bikes. His warlord (proxied by a dreadnought) is actually a bad-ass riding a steed of slaanesh and with two lightening claws. This dude was a total butcher.

"...and for my reward,"

 As he finished flaying away on my biker champion, he was rewarded with the gift of spawndom and proceeded to tear into my daemonettes who were holding the objectives in the trees. It took my last Fiend of Slaanesh (my fiends by-the-way took out two units on their own prior to this) joining in and three or four rounds of furious fighting to kill the blasted spawn!

>BURP!<

 My Great Unclean One arrived tooled up to the max. Rob's Keeper of Secrets (Skim-milk the skinny), fresh from chewing on some Chaos Space Marines, charged my Great Unclean One. I was able to slap it with 2 Enfeebles while powered up Iron Arm and Endurance to get some vicious instant death hits on it. Harsh! In the pic above he just consolidated and was eyeing Rob's possessed who had just kicked the crap out of She-Who-Milks.

>BUUUURP!< "Cor, what's dat o'va dare?" GUO too far way to contest the objective.

 By the end of Turn 7, the noise marines were sitting on an objective...

"It is ours!"

 My last two daemonettes where sitting on an objective as well while playing fetch with their Friend of Slaanesh....

All in all it was hell of a fun game. And it ended in a tie!
I got Line Breaker (1 pt), Slay the Warlord (1vp) and an objective (2vp) = 5vps
Rob got First Blood (1vp), Slay the Warlord (1vp) and an objective (2vp) = 5vps

Rob left the game with dreams of acquiring Great Unclean Ones dancing in his head...



On the other table, it was all out war! A 4-army battle was being waged.

Orcs! (with a 'C') Part 5 -Regiment done!

'Oy there!

As you can see by the title, I finally finished these guys.

My mission was to just get these guys playable, but by goodness do they have a lot of detail! Teeth on necklaces! -Metal bits hanging from straps! -And straps, straps EVERYWHERE! So I even when I had declared back in part-4 that these guys were most done, and now I have reached a point where for the most part, it's true.

The shields were a small problem as I have to figure out which emblem to use. I like the yellow skull on a previous orc model that I had finished, which is while I did the skull on the banner yellow as well, so I just kept theme running.

Painted up to 'Bad Moon Yellow'.

Highlighted using Folk Art 'Lemonade'.
 

The shields are a mix of wood tones and black wood. I wanted the black to look like stained wood to sort of fit the theme and help contrast the yellow skulls. I found the stretched leather to be a bit annoying and in hindsight I don't know why I just didn't get more bare wood shields to use, but that's hindsight for you, right? Regardless, once done I went through the process of affixing them to the orcs, rearranging their ranks a bit, before doing some last minute touch-ups before adding on the flock. Then it was out side to the sunny side of the house where I could line them up on the raid and apply the Tester's flat coat to seal 'em up!

And presto! -We're done!

An angled view so you can see the whole rowdy lot of 'em!

 

 

 

Front view with some late day autumn sun light directly on them. Dig those deep shadows...

Bird's-eye view. No there isn't a guy missing...

Yeah, I'm a guy short to complete the final rank. Yes, this annoys me. I will probably get a single guy ork from ebay to finish it, but chance are I will probably just stick a character in this regiment anyway. We shall see.

Wave yur banna like ye don't care!

Note my finger is holding this up as he currently doesn't balance on his own. I will soon glue washers on the bottom of each base to weigh them down much like my other fantasy models are, as well as magnetize the movement tray (and paint it). He's holding it at a slight angle because I wanted to show his face. But now that I think about it, the banner is sort of defying gravity so I just might have to reposition it anyway...hmmm....whatever, it is done for now! And for the most part, I think they turned out well.

I think the next thing I will do for this army is the chariot...stay tuned!

Sister Secunda

In search of heretics, it's Sister Secunda ready to purge the unclean!

Greetings my fellow fiends! Say your final prayer, and think your final thoughts: your reckoning is at hand! Behold! Sister Secunda is here to accept your penance and send your soul to receive the Emperor's merciful judgment!

Yes, I do have a decent size Sister of Battle Adepta Sororitas army, and not a single one has yet to be primed let alone painted to the degree you see above. No, this is Sister Secunda, Redbird's character in my Dark Heresy campaign. Not the campaign I'm running currently, but one of the 1st adventure's I ran awhile back. Sister Secunda was quite a lot of fun to adventure with considering the constant war of lies that the vile adept in that game was stringing against her. Seriously, it might make quite a fascinating read and probably one that would be far more enjoyable than some of the crappy Space Marine stories I've seen Black Library anthologize (I must digress to say that yes, a review of one such anthology is coming eventually). Redbird and I have an idea to do a sort of illustrated children's book on her first adventure on Iconathos but from the point of view that exposure to Imperial Propaganda must start at a very young age. However I have been too busy or distracted by other things to ever do anything with it. Keep watching this blog for an eventual update.

Well, today is Redbird's birthday, and in collaboration with the Wild Bink (her husband) I have been painting her model of Secunda, off and on, over the period of a fortnight.

The first base coat of Shadow Gray for the white bits.

 Redbird primed her black some years ago, but never did anything else to the model. I solidified the black, and added some grit to the base before applying any base coats.

 Skipping ahead a bit, we can see the next color layer, a lighter blue in the current citadel range, and dwarf flesh on top of a brown base coat.

 Here we are with lots of a dark silver color added and thinned white to the robes. And some Elf Flesh to the face.

A lighter fleshtone that I have, I think it's by Folkart, that I use to get some very 'fair' and delicate flesh tones with. It works great on elves as well. Gold is added to some of the metal bits.

Here she is, mostly done!

The studs on the robe game me a bit of trouble but I think I pretty much pulled it off.

and at another angle

Next off, to see Redbird's reaction to this unexpected gift and to see if we can ever find her backpack so I can paint it and truly finish this model.

"Time to purge some heretic scum!!!"

I had noticed while typing this blog that there was a purity seal peeking out from behind the bolt pistol. This has been painted finally, however I wasn't able to snap a pic of it, because I had to seal it and give it to her:

"Surprise!!!"

The Bink and I presented it to her, by having her close her eyes and hold out her hand. This was snapped within seconds of her opening her eyes. As you can see, she was thrilled! Which is always a thrill when you paint up something like this and see that it's well received, so I guess next year I'll have to top this...maybe paint up Secunda's rhino?

:)

-N'v'ness