The Santa Dwarves Demise (Part 2)

 Work has slowly progressed on these stunties. The Santa theme has now been thoroughly eliminated. The only miniature I kept with a white beard is the standard bearer, although I toned it down with a Nuln Oil wash. I will likely give his beard another highlight of white before he is truly done.

I bet that's noisy when it's windy. 

Most of the other beards were painted using an assortment of colors and techniques. I wanted variety amongst these guys, the idea that they're all the same age or whatever seems a tad absurd to me. There are a few guys with gray bears but I used differ tecniques on each one to attempt to create a subtle difference between them. Here's three examples of that, however I failed to take note of which technique was used on which model. 

Slowly but sure I got the unit up to a standard I was pleased with, and I think they look good massed up in a big unit. Obviously I still have to deal with the bases. And there are also a few more areas I want to tweak a bit. 

Insert champion into gap. 

And now attention must be drawn to this guy, the unit's champion.  This guy is painted in some, um, interesting colors. Garish might be an appropriate description. The trim on the armor is painted in metallic green, his beard is painted in metallic blue, the bright red is ever present on the cloth parts of this model and it's also present on the Warhammer as well. I'm assuming it's intended to represent blood. Maybe when this model was painted Blood For The Blood God was not out yet? 

Gleaming with grudges. 

I plan on painting directly over this existing paint job just as I did the rest of the unit. But I think we'll cover that in Part 3. 

The Santa Dwarves Demise (Part 1)

I recently acquired a small lot of the old Battle For Skull Pass dwarves. An incomplete assortment for sure, and heavily pre-painted. Not quite "one think coat" level, but close to it. Each unit was painted uniquely which I suppose was don to differentiate them more easily during a game The unit of warriors was particularly interesting as they are painted in red with white trim, thus my working nickname for them of "the Santa Dwarves". 

Santa Dwarves bring the xmas cheer. In July. 

The idea of taking the time to strip the paint off feels tedious to me. And those white beards do look like they could take Contrast Paint well... so what if I just painted directly over them? 

Got my new base! 

The first thing to do is to rebase them. Even these guys look better on the 25mm bases. I'm not a fan of models standing sideways or not facing forward, so I am going to remove the slotta tab off the bottom of the model and re-glue the models centered on a 25mm base.

Here is the single dwarf that I painted over a decade ago. I'm going to update this scheme a bit, as it's a little too basic for my current tastes, and then I will try to copy it over onto these Santa Dwarves. With a little bit of time I was able to get the first guy painted. 

The goal. 

The first of the restored dwarves.

The scheme is Caliban Green with a Woodland Green (a very old Citadel paint from the late '80s) layer. There is no additional highlight as I'm trying to keep with a simple scheme here. Plus I think the simplicity of it works. I used Nuln Oil Gloss on the axe and the armor. A few coats of Agrax Earthshade on the beard, Skeleton horde Contrast Paint on the horns. My trusty old Ral Partha Copper on the armor trim which bext had a Reikland Flesh wash over it and a highlight of Mitheril Silver on top of that. And that was pretty much it. 

Here he is next to the original miniature from years ago, as well as beside another of his brethren who is next in line for a refresh. 

The results. 

So far,, I feel good with the results. I'm going to try to get this unit done by the end of the week, but we'll see what life has in store for me. 

Beastmode engaged!

During my recent move I had the opportunity to dig through a lot of my miniatures and models as I restored the Neverness Archive back to it's former glory. In particular, I got to look through my old Warhammer Fantasy stuff. I am particularly keen to build something new (even though it's really old) for the Old World game. The Dwarves were the first to interest me as I had a small force of them back in the day but I only ever managed to only paint up one of them. So the obstacle of having to rebase them isn't there, unlike my Orc & Goblins. 

But then I came across some beastmen:

"...hmmm, I wonder if I can get them to look like this?"

I bought this back in the mid '90s (when the price point for boxes of this size was just $12.50!) with the intention of using them in 40k. The 2nd edition era Codex: Chaos had rules for using beastmen and I was going to put either bolters or lasguns into their left hands. The edition changed before I could get around to that project (a fact that shouldn't surprise even a semi-regular reader of this blog) and the beastmen have only just recently returned to the WH40k game via Killteam. These miniatures did get a new lease for life on my gaming table around 15 years ago when I ran a Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd edition campaign. My players killed quite a few beastmen! 

"Comoany, -look left!!!"

And then I stumbled upon some more miniatures for this faction. These guys are some of the original Ungors. Again, I only ever used them for WHFRP. There were five of them, including a mis-cast with no legs. 

I got these guys around year 2000 in a bulk blind-buy metal deal GW USA did after they had a shelf collapse in their old Glen Burnie location. I think it was a pound of random metal for $10? I bought two of them and found the weirdest assortment of metal bits in them. These guys were part of that as were the next lot...

"Colonel Baaa-ann"

Then I found a few metal minotaurs including a Doombull. Curious to see the in game value of what I had,, I did a quick calculation and determined that I had a good start to a decent sized Beasts of Chaos force. 

The scattered bits of a Doombull. 

The Doombull and the Minotaurs had been a project I started on in the mid-'00s for Bloodbowl. Bloodbowl had been kept alive by GW via an online "living' ruleset and my immediate gaming group was keen to get a Blood Bowl league going. We only got a few games in but I was still very inspired by it. I found the Minotaurs and the Doombull in my collection of metal bits and decided to make them usable for Bloodbowl. This ment ordering a few spare bits from GW mailorder (a golden age we were all taking for granted back then) and hacked off their axes.  The models were mounted on 25mm bases as this was the requirement at the time. Then the whole project died and they were set aside for almost 20 years. 

Which brings us to the present, and my renewed interest in these chaps. I was quite happy to see I had a good amount of 50mm square bases in my bitz bins. Why I initially got them is a mystery to me but I'm taking full advantage of their presence. The Doombull looks awesome on it, as well as having his axes back on him. Drilling and pinning the metal parts together gave me all manner of flashbacks from the turn of this century as I recall doing a lot of it back then. Sadly, one of the axe pummels has been lost but I don't think it looks too obvious. 

The assembled Doombull.

Luckily I simply had an extra arm for this next guy so the amount of drilling and pinning I would've done was minimalized. 

Minotaur #1. 

This next guy was a bigger challenge however. I couldn't find the missing axe head (I think I used it on an orc or an ork) but I had one from the old daemon prince bitz stash. So I cut it in such a way that once joined together it would look a bit longer. However I was displeased with the join and rather than using greenstuff and attempting to sculpt a repair, I had the impulsive idea to just tie a twist-tie around it. Once painted it should appear like leather banding. 

So tempted to stick on 2 googly eyes and call it. 

The other problem was that I was missing a single, very important, bit: his head. I had horns and the lower jaw, just not the head.  Desperate, I searched ebay, and after awhile I found the exact bit I needed. 

Head games. 

The seller, as you can tell from the description, wasn't entirely sure what he was selling. After I left him a positive review he reached out to me in private and wanted to know what the heck they were.  I joyfully explained that one of these heads was a vital piece I was missing and the other was a skull that likely went to a banner or something. 

There was also another metal Gor from that "by the pound grab bag deal" which I use as a unit leader. 

Leader of the herd. 

And I found another minotaur, to give me a unit of three! I think these classic late '80s Minotaurs are just the best. They had so much character and individuality. 

Does he belong in a museum or on my gaming table? 

I also dug up the old multi-part Gors and Ungors boxed set circa the early 2000s. Which I have spent a few evenings assembling, and on the current base sizes. I recall getting these guys to use with WHFRP but the campaign stopped before I could assemble them. 

The herd assembles.

In the background you can see the package for the Beastmen Great Bray Shaman, whom I've been calling Billy Bray Cyrus. Again, he was bought for WHFRP but was instead lost in the archive when we stopped playing that game. 

Cheers for Billy Bray Cyrus!

As you can see, I seem to have bit into a decent sized project here. So far it's a fun distraction from the 40k projects that have dominated my attention over the past year. Since I last dabbled in WHFB Contrast Paints have been incorporated into my painting palette and I think I can get these things painted way quicker than my approach of a decade ago would have resulted. Be we shall see in time. 

The Snottling Wave Restoration Project (Part 1)

 I recently acquired 12 bases of second-hand snotlings.  Which is quite a lot of mini-green meanness to add to my little green wave.

A rambling horde of snotlings.

I almost passed on the deal, as the thought of stripping and cleaning these guys was definitely a turn off. However, upon closer scrutiny, I determined that I could use these existing  paint jobs as a base coat to build more color on top of. I'm still confounded by the  choice made, by whomever painted these models, to use silver as a color for the mushrooms.... but I think I can work past it. 

Can you spot the plastic ones?

I even decided not to repose these guys despite some of the models positioned somewhat randomly on their bases. I figured the more disorganized and haphazard their poses, the more of a rabble they'll appear to be. 

Toot!

The guy blowing the horn is apparently a fragile snotlling because the miniature is broken off of three of these bases, and all of them  at their right leg! 

We said don't break a leg! 

I'm thinking these little guys will work well with the previous group that I painted back in the '90s and hopefully will tie up some of the foes they will end up facing on the battlefield. I recall that I modeled up those ordinal snotlings to use as Shokk Attack gun ammo back in the 2nd edition of 40k,. I also recall my devilish foes would target them in an attempt to deprive my shokk attack gun of it's  precious ammo! 

Wall of snotlings!

This might be a bigger project than I anticipated, but I won't know until I try, right? So let's do this! ...but not today. This post is long enough. Look out for part 2, hopefully soon!