This Old Black Coach (Part 2)

 Since Part One of this project was posted I have made some progress on this grisly model. Quite a lot in fact. 

Yes, it's mostly finished but the most obvious thing I have yet to do is to secure it to it's base. 

As far as painting goes,, here is what I recall: The red areas, the cushions and curtains specifically, were finished off by using Carroburg Crimson in the recesses and Pink Horror for the highlight. The wooden areas, the wheels mostly, were painted using Wyldewood Contrast Paint. This is probably my good go-to for anything wooden, I just love it! 

The gold (-ish) filigree was painted using a copper which was drybrushed over using Sigmartite and finishing if off with a highlight of Stormhost Silver. 

The Black of the coach was highlighted using a light gray. Then I washed over all of the Black areas using Naggaroth Nightshade. 

I didn't want the flames on the pair of torches to be typical flames, but rather something warp and evil. Green flames would fit the bill and stand out against the other colors on the model. 

The last two bits to complete are the driver and the coffin. That also includes the occupant within it...

This Old Black Coach (Part 1)

The Black Coach rides forth.

I have always loved the old Black Coach model. It was so Gothic and regal.  It was also loaded with stoic charm despite it's implied movement. All this made it  a bit creepy.  I also really like the current plastic one with all it's energy and spirit mayhem. However, it 's price point made it unattainable for me. Lucky for me I found this old one for a fraction of the cost. While putting it together I kept finding images of the newer kit, and it's ghostly attendants were really starting to grow on me. 

Primed to the right.

As you can see, I came up with a solution. I found a pair of ghosts attached to a single sprue on ebay. I believe they may have been part of a Warhammer Underworlds team. After a bit of trimming and tweaking I was able to make it seem as if they were whisping forth from the window of this herse. 

Primed to the left. 

I was excited to get cracking on this so I primed the whole thing in Wraithbone and after it dried for a few hours I set about applying Contrast Paint for a basecoat. 

Contrast paints for the basecoat.

I started off with Skeleton Horde for the bones (horses and corpse-on-a-stick), Wyrmwood on the wooden wheels, Black Templar for the bulk of the coach,  Briar Queen Chill on the ghosts and Baal Red on the curtains, cushions, padding and the top knots on the horse's armor. 

Spooky ride. 

The things I didn't paint is the armor on the skelly horse's heads, but I will get to that when I do the touch-ups. After that I proceed to the mid coats and build the whole thing up with highlights.  I am satisfied with it enough to call it battle-ready,  but it's fsr from done in my eyes. 

A piece of a spooky road. 

Of course to truly make it battle-ready I would need to stick onto it's base, which is mostly done at this stage. It just needs a bit of grass tufts and maybe some fallen leaves. But for now, we'll save that for a follow-up post. 

Hobgrots on Squares (Part 2)

 

Ranked, filed and ready! 

Continuing on from the previous post I proceeded to make progress on these guys. 

I never liked the way GW used to paint the old hobgoblins. They were green, oh so green. Greener than the regular grots and gobos by far. I always thought of hobgoblins to be a bit more on the tan side with a hint of green.  A hobgrot painting tutorial in a recent White Dwarf really brought the idea home for me. I have always thought the ideal hobgoblins were the ones depicted on the cover of Warlock magazine #4 (which I bought at the Stars & Stripes bookstore at RAF Greenham Common way back in 1985). Their look forever informed my interpretation of what Hobgoblins should look like. Sadly I don't think any company has ever produced a miniature depicting a pair of them riding a bad-ass griffin but 12 year-old me is holding out hope!

Warlock Magazine #4. Such an awesome magazine this was. 

Anyway,  I began by simply basecoating the skin using Hobgrot Flesh.

Hobgrot Flesh. 

Next I washed the skin using Reikland Fleshwash.

Reikland Fleshwash.

I painted all the ropes (of which there seems to be alot) that adorn these fellas and their shields using  Kborne Red. Their flesh received another layer of Hobgrot Flesh. Then disaster struck: 

Calamity. 

We have two new kittens we adopted about two weeks ago who tend to  combine together into the avatar of a tornado. I made the mistake of leaving the door to my room open and they ended up messing with my table displacing many of my WIP models and worse knocking the movement tray of Hobgrots onto my floor. About half of them were busted off of their bases, but none of the actual miniatures were broken. Sadly the Lance ro my Pegaduke* was snapped off but I managed to fix it . 

Don't let the cuteness of this daemon trick you. 

Once the repairs were made, I highlighted their flesh using Zandari Dust. Then I applied Leadbelcher to their metal things (armor, weapons, trinkets, and whatever else) and painted their teeth with Wraithbone. Oh, and I picked out their eyes using Khorne Red. 

Repaired. 

The metals were washed with Cryptek Armourshade Gloss. I can't recommend this color enough for aging metals, it's amazing! 

The ropes that these guys are basically wearing as crude clothing were painted with Khorne Red. Although I like how these colors looked, at a glance from a distance they kind of looked like guts dangling out of everyone's bellies. That wasn't a look I wanted to run with. 

Repaired and with more paint.

So I went old skool and broke out the classic Blood Red from the '90s and painted over the Khorne Red with it. I really dig this now! This really worked out well on their shields also. 

Red shields (with battle damage).

I decided that he liquid dripping off of the Champion's sword was blood. I have seen other examples that interpreted this as poison and painted that goop in some exotic color to represent that. -Trust me, this was almost Tesseract Green! 

 

Embrace the red.

I decided that it was just a lot of blood and so I painted over it using Wraithbone and then applied about two coats of a classic:  Blood For The Blood God. 

Ta-da, done!

And after a bunch of cleanup using a variety of colors and minor highlights. I would say that the most important one being Stormhost Silver for edge highlights on armor, blades and spikes. 

The Champs.

After some grass tufts, they are now officially done! Yay! The temptation to do more detail work on their faces is strong, but for bulk fodder, I think I can stop here.  I hope these guys look good to you all as well. Thanks again for reading all this!

*It seems that I never posted that article, so sorry about the mystery.  

Hobgoblin Archers (Part 1)

 Here are some classic Hobgoblin miniatures that I recently acquired. After stripping them of their "pro painted" coating, I set about trying to complete the unit, as three Hobos won't cut it. To get them up to the minimum unit size of 10 was probably going o take a long time and cost me a small fortune. The after-market price for these things are outrageous, assuming you can even find that many.! The old Hobgoblins, and even worse, their parent army, the Chaos Dwarfs, are getting pretty scarse. 

OG Hobgoblin Archers.

Thanks to a guy on ebay with a  3D printier a solution was found.  Enter the Evil Traitor Goblin Archers by Brawniac Models.  And I was able get enough miniatures to complete the unit for a fair, and sane,  price.  And they kind of conform rather well with the original models. The biggest difference being that their bows actually have arrows notched onto them. 

Evil Traitor Goblins.

I feel that originals are superior overall. The original one is still a good sculpt with very well defined details, whereas the details on the printed version can seem a bit....vague. 

Compare and contrast. 

Primed and ranked together, I feel that they work together just fine.  But soon I will be painting them up properly and hopefully they'll mesh even better. 

Conformity in black.

And yes, the Hobgrots I posted about recently are kind of my proving ground for these guys. I have been making considerable progress on them and they'll get an update before these guys do, so watch out for that. 

Bats, man (Part 1)

 Bats. Swarms of bats. 

Sorta. 

While poking around the Neverness Archives I stumbled upon these old bats. Much like a lot of my Warhammer Fantasy models, that weren't acquired for inclusion in a specific army, these were purchased for use in one of my D&D campaigns. Specifically D&D 3.5, and expressly for use as  Firebats in a 3.5 conversion of the classic 1st Edition module The Tower of Inverness. They are part of an awesome encounter involving a Fire Giant and a lot of lava.  These firebats performed admirably in the game, but that was their only rodeo, and they haven't been touched since. That was around 2003-ish. 

The goofy stands that were molded onto these things did not sit well with me back then (and less so now). So I chopped them off and drilled a rod into their posterior.  Then I mounted them to a flight stand rod which in turn was mounted onto a 20mm base. 

This worked out wonderfully in the game as these creatures operated independently and not as a swarm in the Warhammer sense. My original idea was that I would use greenstuff to sculpt flames onto them. I still believe this would have looked rad as hell, but time was more persistent than my vision and what you see in these pics are as far as the whole project got. And yes, they kicked ass in the game! 

When I recently dug these guys out of the archive, the plan was to magnetize them to a 40mm base and make them removable. Very much like I did with the Tyranid Ripper Swarms I assembled awhile back. But when I double-checked their stats I found that they have 5 wounds per base, and not the 3 that I thought they had. Oops. 

And that just isn't going to work like I originally envisioned. 

So my current plan is to remove the bats from their 20mm bases and attach them at different heights to a 40mm base. I am fairly confident I can make this work. So confident that I am going to save that whole process for the eventual, but inevitable,  Part 2 of this series. 

Swarmlord (Part 2)

 It's been a while since I posted Part 1 of this saga of the Swarmlord, but the desire to throw paint on him can no longer be restrained. That, and I wanted a break from my recent Old World focus.  Don't get me wrong, I am loving all that fantasy stuff after so many years away from it, but I was having fun working on the nids a few years ago and was recently feeling a bit bummed that I didn't finish this army. 

Primed.

So I decided to do something about it. 

I basecoated the model using Contrast Paints (Luxion Purple, Ultramarines Blue, and Skeleton Horde), Chaos Black Citadel Color and Applebarrel Indian Red. A lot of my color choices are somewhat in line with the choices I made on Old One Eye  awhile back as well as my original Screamer Killer model. 

Basecoated.

For the swords (including the one growing out of his head) I applied a thinned Khorne Red along the edges. 

Khorne Red blades. 

And so far, he is looking pretty much battle-ready.  But I'm not going to settle for just that, so stay tuned for the next steps! 

Hobgrots on Squares (Part 1)

 Somehow I found myself thinking "Gee, I could use some hobgoblins," and searching the internet looking for sanely-priced hobgoblins was an exercise in disappointment. But I kept stumbling upon AoS Hobgrots for fairly cheap. Eventually I took a good look at them and decided that these guys could work out just fine. They're not as comical as their ancestors of 30 years ago, but they fit the pseudo-mongolian vibe well enough. I am particularly found of their helms which strike a sort of samurai gestalt with me that I think works very well. 

I found a few sprues of old Warhammer shields that were made for the intention of being plugged onto the arms of whichever old metal model that could take them.  These shields have a big hole in the middle of them as a result which often makes them difficult to use on different miniatures. When I was working on some plastic skeletons recently I took note of the sbield plugs that came on their old sprues. These worked out great on these old shields.  I like the bigger size of these shields as I feel they put off a more archaic vibe.  

The Boss.

Most of these guys have two weapons and I decided to essentially ignore the smaller weapon and put a shield on that arm where applicable. Some of them have their shield going across their back. I just put them on however I thought looked the most pleasing to my eye. I think the chaotic disposition gives the unit that killer rabble vibe 

The Musician.

I accidentally built two musicians for this unit, not realizing what I had done until I had finished the unit's construction. I am already thinking about getting a second unit so that musician will likely go to that unit. (Eventually).

Standard Bearer.

Just for kicks, here is what the hobgrots look like next to one from the early '90s. I could say so much, but this is a good opportunity to just let the picture do the talking. I am sure it says far more than I am capable of articulating!

Compare and contrast.

As soon as I get my hands on a new rattle-can of Chaod Black, I will be able to start painting these lovely  chaps.

Lady Annika in the Old World (Part 1)

 I decided I wanted to add a bit of diversity to my vampire counts and, while I was at one of the local game stores, this kit called out to me.  So I decided to give her a shot.  I knew her cloak/robe-thing would flow off of her 25mm base, and I thought I could make that work.  But what surprised me was her height. (More on that in a moment here). So I built her up anyway.  I was stuck trying to determine which arm to take: the one holding the mask or the bat winged one. Mrs. Neverness thought the bat winged one was best so I went with it. 

Too classy for her base. 

Back to the height issue; She is definitely taller, by a considerable margin, compared to most of the typical Old World humanoids. But I think I am OK with this as it allows her to stand out rather dramatically during play.  I swear I think AOS has gone to a 32mm scale. But that's a topic I haven't enough knowledge to truly explore at this time.  So long as she's attached to a unit on the right flank,  her clothing can flow off to the side and not interfere with the joined unit. 

It's like a flank bumper. 

Now to figure out how to paint her (and her zombie pirate buddy's as well).  And eventually this unit of 20 pirate zombies will be getting their own post as I work on them more. 

"Arrrr, brains!"

This army is starting to come together and I'm having a lot of fun with it so far.  At this point I have a fully painted Tomb Banshee, Spirit Hosts and Skeletons with Spears. And there is definitely more to come! 

Saving the Cygor

On a recent trip to Knoxville TN, I swung by the CM Games store in Cedar Bluff where they happened to be having a 50% off sale on their used miniatures. This Cygor stood out to me as a very good bargain considering the current after-market prices for this guy, but more importantly I felt like I could save this model. 

"Save me!"

Mostly I just need to finish the basecoat, and just build up the colors from there. Except for that big boulder he is holding. That thing will be completely repainted. Don't get me wrong, I admire the original painter's attempt to make this appear molten, but it just doesn't work for me with this model. 

In the Neverness Hobbyzone being studied.

And I need to rebase him also.  And that's where I am starting this project.  I removed him from the large oval base and sized him up for his 60x100mm square  base before gritting it up and priming it. And of course, I felt compelled to go ahead and paint it prior to affixing the Cygor to his new base. 

The new base.

I used Skeleton Horde on any of unpainted bones and skulls. Volupus Pink was used on the big guy's tongue and mouth. For the big rock I used Adeptus Battlegray Foundation Paint on the rock. That stuff is still amazing. I was able to coat it in no time and get that thing looking like a big stone again. This revealed details to me that I hadn't noticed before such as the vine of ivy growing acrossed it. 

New base attached. 

I liberally applied Bloodreaver Flesh over most of the fleshy areas, which immediately began. To brighten up the model. 

Bloodreaver Fleah. 

Bugman's Glow was added over that which really started to bring this thing to life. 

Bugman's Glow.

And then I topped the fleshy bits with Cadian Fleshtone. This seemed like a good place to stop on this part. 

Cadian Fleshtone.

Stop? No way, I was having too much fun! I used white ink to fill in the recesses on the big stone (I made a mess of it really, but I tried). Then I decided to use Tesseract Glow on the recesses. 

Super glowy rock. 

After that I used Adeptus Battlegray Foundation Paint again to sort of dry brush over these groves in an effort to restore the glowy spirals. Although this turned out OK, my choice of Tesseract Glow clashed with my choice of green for the ivy. 

White drybrusbing on the hair/quils/fur areas.

The solution was to paint over the ivy using thinned Khorne Red. This kind of gives it a bit of poison ivy look which also gives it the benefit of contrast against the Tesseract Glow. 

Fur Contrast Paint over hair/quils/fur areas.

And then I worked up the leather wraps using the original Blood Angels Red as a base for Screamer Pink which was then washed in Nuln Oil and thinly highlighted with Pink Horror.

The bones (of which there is a staggering amount adorning this fella) were finished off using Screaming Skull, Wraithbone and White Scar. Pretty much the same process I used on the skellies I painted up recently. Except I was way more conservative with the use of the White Scar. 

With my final touch-ups I'm calling this Cygor done! Enjoy the next few pics of this model from different angles. 

And here is a final shot to help give those of you who may not be familiar with this model a sense of scale...

"Wow, you're a big one!" 

He should fit in well with the rest of my Beastmen Brayherd, of which, he is the first one with a finished paint job.. Actually, working on this guy has inspired me to do more, and hopefully I will do so soon.