AoS Square-based Skeletons (Part 1)

 

After I finished the Black Coach for my Vampire Counts and gathered the whole (painted) army together to look upon my progress so far, it became apparent that I needed more Core units to support this army. Enter Skeleton Horde #2. This unit was part of the AOS Soulblight Gravelords Vanguard set that I recently picked up. Unlike Skelly Horde #1, these fellas are better proportioned, better armored, and look bad-ass. After getting them on to 25mm square bases and playing around with ranking them up, I am confident they'll work out just fine in the game. 

Assembled and gritted.

And yet, that older style of Skeleton Warrior isn't without it's charm. I have enough left over to assemble another unit (Skeleton Horde #3 will have Hand Weapons and Shields). Oh and those really old ones I posted about awhile back will likely be joining these guys as well.  Just for kicks, I thought I would take some of the leftover  bitz from this new kit and see how well they would work on the older ones. 

...and I think it works well! 

Anyway, I painted these things almost entirely using Contrast Paints. All of the cloth areas were painted using Black Templar. The spear shafts were painted with Baal Red. All the leather bits, straps and sheaths, were painted with Snakebite Leather. The bulk of the models are the armor and Spearheads which were all painted with Gore-Grunter Fur which makes a great base for rusted metal. 

Basecoats with Contrast Paint.

I wasn't so sure about this direction, so I decided to take a single Skeleton Warrior up to a. Early finished state. I edged highlighted the cloth scraps using Fenrisian Grey and washed over that with Drakenhof Nightshade. Then I kind of drybrushed the metals using Canoptek Alloy. 

One guy mostly done.

And dang! -I am very pleased with these results. Now I have 19 more to go...

An undead mass.

This Old Black Coach (Part 3)

Not that there was all that much to finish from last time, I still managed to finish this. Well, mostly. 

He's here to do the reaping.

The biggest change is that the driver is now fully painted and mounted onto his seat. I used the same color palette for his skin that I used on the ghosts. His robes were painted up from black to a light gray and then washed over using Naggaroth Nightshade. The blade of his scythe was painted with a dark brown, then a bit of old Tin Bitz was dabbed on it before finishing it with an edge highlight of Stormhost Silver.

I imagine this thing bouces a lot. 

Also, this post was a chance to re-photograph this thing with a different color background so that the ghosts stand out better. They blended in a bit more than  I would have preferred with the previous one.

Rear 3/4 shot.

The coach is now securely attached to it's base. I added a few tufts of grass on the road edge. I think I might go back and place a few leaves as well, but we'll see if I can remember to do that.

Profile shot. 

The last thing to finish is the coffin and it's resting occupant. He was fun to paint, although a bit challenging. I have wonder how challenging sculpting this was for the artist who produced this. I had an idea to try to magnetize the lid using thin straps of sheet magnet. This, however, utterly failed. I think it was a polarity issue and after several attempts, I decided to abort the whole magnet idea. Frustrated, I stopped there for the night. 

Sheet magnets on the coffin rim.

The next day I looked at it and decided the sheet magnets had to go so I stripped them off, repaired the damaged paint, and applied three tiny magnets. These magnets were acquired back when the misguided notion of slapping out Marine special weapons was something I was keen to do.. Anyway, after attempting to reverse some of polarity on these new magnets I was impressed when they actually worked! 

Small magnets added. 

There is a significant gap between the lid and the coffin, but without getting really fanatical about the whole thing, I decided I would live with this. If I had known how this would've resulted beforehand I would've attempted to add a small green LED light to the inside of the coffin to make the light seep out of that gap. That might've looked creepy-cool. 

Not as a tight a gap as I wanted but it'll do.

The coffin fits in the Black Coach now and I am not at risk of losing the coffin lid. Well, unless I lose the whole thing, but that would be far worse blunder. 

Happy trails.

I think this is a good opportunity to take a look at all of the Vampire Counts miniatures I have built and painted so far. Interestingly, since I started painting models for Warhammer: The Old World last summer, I seem to have painted more for this army than I have any of the other ones. I suppose the Dwarfs are coming in second in that race but we'll see if they can retake that spot back over soon. Note the cluster of primed pirate zombies over to the right, just waiting for their paintjobs to enhance their grossness. And I have a few more vampires waiting as well. Currently, the only painted vampire is conked out in the back of that Black Coach! 

The spooky crew so far...

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.