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!

Sheba.

 Sheba was our wonderful, characterful dog. She was a very good dog, not the kind that would just take off on you or grossly misbehave. She loved her cat buddies and could follow commands well. She was less of a pet and more like a companion. She was family. Sadly she ended up having a cancer that ended her life and she held on for as long as possible. 

During her final days I wanted to honor her somehow so I found a miniature of a wolf from the Reaper miniatures line that sort of resembed her. Mrs. Neverness has always felt that her totem spirit was a wolf and we have Native American wolf imagery throughout the house, so it seemed fitting to overlay Sheba's color pattern over a wolf template like this. But Sheba passed away before I could get past the priming stage. And for years this model has sat in the background queue with only it's base painted. 

Well, Mrs Neverness reminded me that I should finish painting this miniature, so one afternoon I made a go of it and this was the result. 

I felt the need to highlight the Black parts of her coat even though this is not consistent with reality it does give depth to the miniature. 

Also you might be able to tell but I gave the miniature different colored eyes. Sheba had heterochromia, which is the condition where one eye is a different color from the other. Some folks found this unsettling, but we just thought this was part of what made her such a cool dog.

All these years later and we miss her still, and I am pleased to finally complete this tribute to Sheba. 

Sheba and I.

Primaris Lt. In Phobos Armor

 Do I really need another Primaris Lieutenant? (Does anybody?) Well, yeah, I do. This particular guy will fit in nicely with my Reivers as well as the Eliminators unit I constructted alongside this guy. They were finished during the March For Macrage challenge, but this poor chap was sidelined. -Until now!

They're not garters, they're knife straps!" 

Of course I basecoated the blue armor using my old Space Marine Blue. I hope I can find another paint pot of this color eventually, or at least a good analog for it. 

Let's cut to the chase, since I have shown these steps ad nauseum on this blog  already and I just don't feel the need to be that redundant at this moment.  I pretty much painted him like the examples I've seen in Imperium Magazine and elsewhere, with the exception that I painted his mask red with a white stripe running down the middle to denote his Lieutenant rank. I think this looks pretty cool, even though this might increase the odds of him getting shot in the face. Of course I realized well after the fact that these colors should be inverted, but I like the way this turned out so I'll leave it be. 

Finally, the dreaded decal stage.  Thankully this wasn't too problematic and I only used two decals on this model. 

And with that stage completed he is done. Normally I would probably add a few grass tufts but I have already packed them away for the move.  

And yes my family are moving to new house and everything is in chaos and disarray. Granted I'm not moving far, just 20 acres away, but it's turnng out to be a long drawn out affair which has stopped my hobbying for the time being. Hopefully things will pick back up soon. 

Venom #2 (Part 3)

 I was able to make a decent amount of progress on this model since last time. Really the only thing left to do was the gunner. Somehow through the back and forth that Da Masta Cheef and I did with this thing ("Take this." "No, you!" Etc.) One of the sprues disappeared. 

So I had to build the gunner from a variety of bits.  The legs and right arm are from the original 3rd edition Dark Eldar Warrior sprue, the torso is from the Venom kit and so is the head. The arm with the chain is from the Wyches kit. 

Yeah, he is one kitbashed fellow, but I think he turned out well. He seems a bit more relaxed than the gunner from Venom #1, who looks like she just wants to kill everyone. This guy is a more casual kind of killer. You can compare and contrast them with the last two pics in this post.

The last thing to do was affix the canopy to the cockpit. This was done using Testor's Clear Parts Cement, a niracle affixing agent I wish I had when I was building model planes as a kid. 

And here they are together. My fleet of dread murder elf skimmers has doubled!

Hopefully I can get the next one done soon-ish and finally start on some Raiders. I would love to finally field this as a proper army by the end of the year, but we shall see. 

Blood Axe Kaptin (Part 4)

 At the end of Part 3 I had stated that I felt that this guy was mostly done, but that it needed something else...

"Sumfink! Go git 'em!"

That's right, an attack squig. Which definitely meets the criteria of "some thing".  And the one I chose was this classic Rogue Trader era ork squig. Well, technically a tyranid squig. It's a bit of a complicated piece of lore that was only ever published once (White Dwarf #145 specifically). But nevertheless this classic freaky squig fit perfectly on my Blood Axe Warboss' base and gives a sense of menace. Mirthful menace mind you, but menace. 

Bare metal.

Unfortunately the tab had to go!

Primed.  

For such an old squig, it's still fairly large. Here he is on equal footing being compared to a Dark Eldar warrior. 

It kind of looks like a fleshy battle-bot in a way...

I based-coated this thing using Contrast Paints. Skeleton Horde for the claws, teeth and spikes, and Blood Angels Red for the skin. 

Contrast Paints basedcoat. 

Next I washed the model in Agrax Earthshade then gave it a layer of Khorne Red. The boney bits were given a layer of Screaming Skull with Wraithbone highlights. 

Mostly done.

Once he was done it was just a matter of affixing the squig, now names Sumfink, to the base of this Warboss, which a bit of superglue took care of in no time. 

Left side details

I'll work out a name for this big git eventually. But like many of my characters, sometimes they earn their names during a game.  With all I got going on, that may be a while. 

Rear details.

To end this project I added a few grass tufts to the base.  The final thing left to do is to add a clear coat to help reduce the chance of chipping the paint.

The job's done!

And now my Blood Axes have a dedicated leader. WAAAAGH!