Stumped

Recently I decided that I wanted to add more woodland details to some of my miniatures.  That was when I remembered the stumps that Woodland Scenics made. For years, many years, I would see these things in hobby stores and model train shops and think about how they might work as basing material. Well, I think it's time to put them to the test. Of course, after seeing them for years in various hobby stores across the land, when I wanted to finally get a pack they were nowhere to be found. Luckily I found them on eBay for less than $20 after shipping. 

This pack contains a variety of pewter stumps in various sizes. They have stubs on the bottom to allow you to plug them into whatever material you were making your model out of. For the purposes of the wargaming hobbyist those studs fit near perfectly into the round mounting holes that a lot of 40mm (and larger) GW bases have. I did have to clip some of them down a bit though, as you can see in the pic below. And

These sexy minotaurs were more than gracious enough to model these stumps for us. Indeed, I think these will greatly enhance their bases to give them the impression that they are smashing out of an old woodland area. This helps fill out these bases with detail as these older models feel a bit small on these 50mm bases. But I really enjoy modeling up bases so this was kind of it's own reward for me. 

Of course they will work great with Wood Elves and forestry based Empire forces. Really any fantasy models now that I think of it. The next stage for these minotaurs is to enhance their bases further with rocks, fallen brush, dead leaves and even a corpse or two. And skulls, always skulls. These model will likely be covered in their own post thread as I begin focusing more on them and their beastmen ilk. Meanwhile, I think I might try to locate another pack or two of stumps to have on hand as I continue to work on more fantasy miniatures. 

My Minotaur Maze Adventure (Part 1)

 

"Mooo-baaaah!"

Ok, "adventure" maybe trying to sell this thread a bit strong, but it has been a long year of occasional tinkering since I first posted my intentions  regarding this army.  I finally found a bag of random Beasts of Chaos metal bits, that I had been trying to find for a few years, and one of the things I found was an almost complete minotaur.  He was just missing his horns and lower jaw. 

"I'm not the MAN I used to be,"

After scouring the usual online sources, any bitz I did find were extortionately priced. Too high for my meager hobby budget! So I brainstormed  for alternative solutions and came up with one that I thought might just do the trick. I was looking at the Skulls boxed set and noticed all those beastmen skulls. Most of which are too long or ornate to stick on a random dude's base. Curiously, there are no bull horns in that set. I know of a few Goff Ork and fantasy orc  players that wouldn't have minded to have those in this set, but I thought II would try out the skull with the long goat horns any way.  After all, these guys are Beasts of CHAOS and should have a diverse range of mutations and horn styles. 

Horns again.

I drilled and pinned the horns onto the metal minotaur head. On the same sprue there was also a jaw that fit very well onto this guy so I went ahead and attached it also. 

Jaw restored.

Next I sculpted some green stuff over and into the gaps on the minotaur's head. 

"It's not a toupee!"

I did likewise for the jaw bone as well. 

Green stuffed jaw.

Next I used a sculpting tool to try to replicate the fur on the minotaur's head and neck. This turned out OK I think, but the real test will happen when I finally paint him. 

Greenstuff in the gaps.

With the left over greenstuff I tried to fill a gap in his weapon arm and I put the rest on the back of the base to try create a small burrow of some sort. 

Greenstuff done.

Now I am waiting for the green stuff to set before I attempt to do anything else to this model. It will be a while  before you see Part 2 to this series, but I assure you that it will happen before the decade ends. Maybe. 

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. 

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.