13th Birthday!

 13 years? Yup, I have been blogging my hobby updates on this Chronicle for 13 years now. I don't normally celebrate this anniversary, and there have been many years when I have totally missed it, but tbis year I thought I might give you folks a behind the scenes update on what's happening to me and my current relationship with 'the hobby.

Let me knock out the personal stuff first:  Back in January I had a minor heart attack due to a congenital heart defect that had been hidden from me, and everyone else, for 50 years, and I have been out of work ever since. This happened less than a month after the Misses and I closed on a construction loan.  Luckily we have been able to survive financially with some generous help from friends and family.  The house is progressing nicely and we should be able to start moving in a few weeks. I am out of work on Doctor's orders to "take it easy" and not lift over 15lbs until after my open-heart surgery. I have been waiting  for well over a month for the hospital that I have been referred to, to contact me to schedule this surgery. It's been a stressful time, despite my efforts to "take it easy".  Ironically I will have time to move house, but I have that weight restriction that limits what I can physically move. It's almost a catch 22 scenario. 

But I have had more time for hobbying than I have had in years. Heck, I have played more games since January than I have played in some recent calendar years. So it's not a totally bad time at all. Plus I have been catching up on some of my backlog on the painting and building side of the hobby.  I am continuing to work on:

• Tyranids. They're coming along nicely but slowly.
• Ultramarines. I have really been pleased with how they have been turning out and I intend to keep at it. 
• Blood Axe Orks. Always fun, and it's been a nostalgic trip to paint some of my oldest models.
• Worldeaters. Only a few units left to go! 

Those are the big ones. There are a few more things coming soon that I'll tease you about now: 

• Adeptus Mechanicus. I had a lot of fun working on those Voss Prime units and I look forward to doing more. 
• Space Wolves. I have a few units I want to knock out of the queue. And if they go well I may add a few more. 
• Dark Eldar. Tbis might turn into a big project.

How all of this will be affected by the move and surgery is anyone's guess, but I have enough stuff lurking in the draft folder to keep the content trickling out during those times. 

I also have some post-move plans, dreams if you prefer, that I'm keen to get to:

• Horus Heresy: I want to get at lest one faction of marines up and playable for HH. I have a Death Guard army waiting to be assembled and painted  but I'm also inclined to convert some of my oldest miniatures (Space Wolves and Ultramarines) over to it also. 
• Warhammer The Old World. This was going to be my big thing in 2024 but all I have going on has kept me from making anything happen. 
• Scenery. I miss doing scenery and I hope to be able to work on some after the move. 
• Orks. Snakebites in particular. This project will be quite gargantuan in scope. 

It's been 13 years of fun, which with a dash of luck, I can continue to tally more years onto. Thanks for your support and interest. Having an audience, albeit a small one, is a fun motivator to keep me doing this like I do. 

 

Bori the Bloody (Part 2)

 

Following up from the previous post I got right into painting this fiend. I started out by painting just about the entire model using Khorne Red. An appropriate color choice for sure. On the brass areas I used my tried snd true Ral Partha Bronze. The bones, tusks, skulls and hooves were coated using Corax White. 

Base coats. 

Next I washed all of the flesh using Agrax Earthshade. The bones areas were coated with Skeleton Horde Contrast Paint. 

Washes on most of it. 

The armor was coated using the classic Citadel color from the '90s, Blood Red. Still my go-to after all these years. 

Blood Red armor.

After tightening up that red armor I finished it with a subtle edge highlight of another classic '90s color, Sunburst Yellow. 

Sunburst Yellow highlights.

The bones and such were all given a layer of Screaming Skull paint. It was at this point I decided to make the space marine helmet (which I think probably still has a head in it) an Ultramarine. It was a color contrast choice more than anything. I like to make the dead marines on my chaos bases Dark Angels but I haven't encountered any on the tabletop in years. 

Screaming Skull on the bones. 

This is a good place to stop. He is almost done and I should get him wrapped up in Part 3. See you then! 

Blood Axe Kaptin (Part 2)

Continuing now from Part 1, I applied a wash of Tesseract Glow all over his flesh. And wow did I love the result of this! Remember, the formula for his flesh up to this point was an Olive Drab Prime, Caliban Green basecoat, and Gretchin Green Foundation Paint. The next pic shows only his right arm with the Tesseract Glow so you can see the difference. 

Tesseract Glow on one arm.

And here is the front of model with Tesseract Glow all over the flesh. 

Tesseract Glow layer.

And here is the back side. Back in the '90s I probably would've called this done, as it looks very close to the scheme I was using back then. 

View of left arm. 

But I can't leave well enough alone.  So added Apple Barrel Kiwi as a next level coat, first level thinned down the next solid, before finishing it off with a highlight of Sunburst Yellow. 
 

"Me flesh is done!"

Next came some more details, In this case, his mouth. The tongue and gums were based with Khorne Red, then Screamer Pink before next a final coat of Pink Horror. Two layers of Screaming Skull were applied to the teeth and bone areas. 

Teeth cleaned by dental squig. 

And this looks like a good place to stop. Look out for part 3 sooner than later (hopefully). 

Bori the Bloody (Part 1)

Primed and ready.

I had a creative itch the other day. And with a dash of boldness as well. I decided I wanted a khorne specific Daemon Prince, but with my current situation I don't have the disposable income to just go get one. But then I remembered I had a bunch of left over plastic and metal daemon prince parts. So this, kind of stupid, yet also kind of cool, idea was born. 

As I started to tinker away with the assorted parts it became obvious that the most necessary part I lacked was a complete torso, either in metal or in plastic. But I did have the front pieces in plastic.  But I had plenty of other junk that I  might be able to use and fake the rest of it with greenstuff. 

Fitting the bits. 

The growth spurt between the late '90s metal Daemon Prince and the plastic one from last decade is very much apparent. But I had this idea that he was like an old cartoon caricature of a tough guy,: all shoulder and chest and puny legs. Not too physcially different from an ork nob in that respects. 

I scrapped away on the front of the torso so it would join up better with the metal legs. Afterwards I glued the arms to the torso front piece. Slowly my 3-D puzzle was coming together. But I found that it was necessary to pin the plastic torso to the metal legs for added strength. 

Pinned.

Next came the big glob of greenstuff. I applied layers of muscle to the back and tried to get the  back to conform to the front. My lack of skill with sculpting is quite obvious here, but what I did accomplish I can live with. 

Baby's got back. 

I hid the most egregious errors along the belt line with trophy skulls and a marine helm. And I added a plastic cloth to cover up the tail hole, since I didn't have a tail available to fill in that gap.  Finally I glued this monster to his base and left him propped up on some paint pots for a few hours so the glue could dry and to allow the green stuff to cure more. 

Drying.

After that I sprinkled on some grit to the base. After that dried I took him out with some of his friends  (you'll see them in a future post) for a priming party. Which is the state he is in in the first pic of this post. 

I shared the above pic with some of the guys in our text group and I stated how I was going for the big bruiser with the little legs vibe. Screech responded with this image ( below), which hilariously captures the exact vibe I was going for even though I hadn't thought about this at all during the modeling process (I was thinking about some tough cats from old Tom and Jerry cartoons). He's even got a skull belt buckle! 

"Never bet on Satan!"

Genestealer Brood #2 (Part 1)

 I did not need to build these guys. I have a lot of Genestealers, more than I can currently field in a game, but I wanted a unit that looked very different from the other painted unit. The first unit, or if you prefer brood, that I painted started off life as a kill team intended to be used in one of the older iterations of the Kill Team game. But this brood I wanted to build using the scything talons and extended carapace, two options and biomorphs that have been saddly dropped from their rules. 

The brood of 8. 

Just like the last two batches of termagants, I painted these up to a battle-ready standard as I don't currently want to invest the time in them to get them up to my parade-ready standard. I will in time, just not yet. I did this by using mostly Contrast Paint with exception to just the extended carapace which was basecoated using Abaddon Black. 

I wanted these guys to look like the hivemind was actively adapting with guys, thus the variety of biomorphs and strange heads. Even though the game hardly supports these concepts on the tabletop. 

The first half of these guys I put together using their basic hands, as that's traditionally how they're built. However the assembly instructions that I got showed them using  the clawed hands with the scytjing talons that I thought looked really dynamic. So I built the second half using that look. 

Those of you that can count will have no doubt noticed that this is just a brood of eight models and Genestealers are now fielded in units of 5 - 10 models. I have one finished model that will join with these fiends, despite his lack of biomorphs. The poor guy has been through hell since he was first finished so it will be nice to give him some chums to run with. I just need to find one more model of this style genestealer purestrain to complete the brood...

Blood Axe Kaptin (Part 1)

Here's a miniature I have been procrastinating on for.... gosh, make that two decades now! This is the first of the big Warhammer 40,000 3rd edition era Ork Warbosses which came out in the summer of 1999.  I liked him, but he didn't quite suit the Goffs whom I was running at the time. In fact when the 2nd version (the one with the attack squig arm) came out, that was the model I decided I wanted to build first. And this poor guy just sat in his opened blister pack bidding his time. 

Waaagh?

At some point I decided to make him a Blood Axe Warboss. This was mostly on account of that big axe of his. Seemed obvious to me that a Blood Axe guy would be obsessed with big axes, right?  But he needed something but I didn't know what...

Oy, me 'ead's cold!

And one day,, like a bolt out of the blue,  Warhammer Community came to the rescue with an article about Bad Krumpany. I was totally inspired by the Ork Warboss Wade Price made for his Blood Axe Army, and I had to seek out that hat for my guy.  He had the perfect head for it too. After some scouring of bits sites online I managed to locate it. It's part of the Nork Deddog options from the Ogryn plastic kit, a Vox caster with a skull wearing a Commissar hat. 

Da Boss hat.

Having acquired this bit, I set about carving off the skull and speaker stuff to leave just the cap. Then I worked on hollowing out the hat enough for it to fit on the Warboss' domed head. 

Assembled! 

Next I primed him using an Olive Drab spray paint. It's not the best coverage job I've ever done,  but I got the areas I needed to. 

Primed!

Onto the basecoats. I used Caliban Green for the flesh base, and picked out the metal areas and boots using Abaddon Black. The interior mouth area and the wrap on the axe handle was based with Khorne Red. There are more details to pick out but I will deal with those as I proceed with the paint job

Basecoats! 

Onto the mid-coats! Yeah I was going to save this for Part 2, but I'm eager to share the progress. So I touched up all the areas. Then I washed all the recess areas if the olive drab with Agrax Earthshade. Then I used Gretchin Green Foundation Paint on the skin. Ontop of the Caliban Green, it gives the Warboss a weird pale look. It's almost freaky, especially with the  brown teeth. 

Gretchin Green flesh layer. 

I was really tempted to leave the axe Olive Drab colored but I decided that a Blood Axe Boss should be carrying a blood red axe. Also, It contrasts well with all the shades of green that the rest of this model is mostly going to be. I might put some Olive Drab back on the gun, but I'm not there yet.. 

Ok, let's stop here. I am excited to be  painting this guy, and I hope to get him done soon. We'll see in Part 2. 

Blood Axe Boyz ( Part 5)

Alright, here are eight more Boyz completed for Drab Squad. (I'm saving the Nob for last). It's been a long road for these guys (even longer when one factors in their age!) but we have arrived to their completion. 

At the time of this writing we are still in the first year of Warhammer 40,000 10th edition and it looks like my battalion plan for my Orks is pretty much still functional. So I will continue to develop my Bad Moons, Goff and Blood Axes. The Blood Axes are still going to mostly, and almost exclusively, use older miniatures. In fact I think they'll be all metal by the time they're finally done. 

But let's talk about these guys. This first one is a plasma gunner. Not sure what he'll count as in game since the Orks lost their plasma weapons way back in 3rd edition. 

This guy's has the least amount of olive drab on him as he has the most metal of leather jackets. He is also the only one I could squeeze a Blood Axe icon onto. In this case I imagined it as a back patch. I did this by hand; not sure if I like the results but I think it'll do. 

This guy has a visor in his helm. Definitely a look that never made it out of the early days of Rogue Trader. I like to think it's part of welding mask incorporated into his armor. 

I put a beaky helmet on the base of this guy. Of course I had to paint it in Ultramarines colors as the only beakies that my old Orks consistently fought against were my brother's old Ultramarines. 

This guy with the foreign legion hat has a Dark Eldar helm on his base. Painted in my favorite kabal colors of course, that of the Obsidian Rose. 

It was also kind of cool to see belts of bullets all over this guy that were actually scaled to look like normal bullets. 

Here's the second of the visor guys. He is distinguished by the rocks on his base. His foot was bent in an odd way so instead of trying to bend it back I just stuck a rock under it to give the impression that he might be walking over it. 

The next two Boyz are extremely basic. I painted their boots in different colors to make it easier to tell them apart. 

And the brown shoes guy has a skull on his base for a bit more distinction. 

Here is a heavy plasma gunner ork. I love how crude and cobbled together this thing appears. I still think orks should've kept their access to plasma weapons in the game but with the provision that they could only shoot on the maximal setting with the required 'gets hot' test.

How is that not orky?!

Either way,  I like the idea that the Blood Axes have tankers full of olive drab paint that they spray all over everything (kind of like what the U.S. military used to do back in 1970s. Everything on the bases I spent my youth on was olive drab. Well until they fell in love with cammo in the mid-80s. But I digress). Thus even pieces of equipment such as this heavy plasma gun just has to be olive drab. 

This grinning guy is the last of the lot. Again, more of his gear is olive drab than not. -As it should be! 

Ok, as I stated at the start,  only the nob is left for this unit. Look for him in a future post.