Undead - Markus Vellen & Gert the Hood

Tonight my final two recruits for my undead Warcry warband join the ranks. Markus Vellen, wight, and Gert the Hood, lowly skeletal spearman. Markus is another of Gary Morley's legendary wights, while Gert is yet another Bob Olley, though not one you see about too much.

Look at that helmet. Pure metal.

I used the same technique on Markus that I used previously on Einar Haugen. Again, contrast paint made painting the black armour a breeze. I spent more time on his cloak than on his entire suit of plate. The green-tinted axe and red cloak give him a little more jazz, and there's a purple pouch in there too someplace.

I used the ever handy Typhus Corrosion on the hem of the cloak to weather it a little. There's a wee spider on the base too, if you can make it out. 

Gert is a simpler fellow, though he did get a spider too. As with all things Olley, his ragged hood and tunic led me down many a merry path. I found myself painting bone as cloth twice. Never underestimate a Bob. 

With these two complete, I now have a full Warcry warband ready to Harryhausen it all over the Eightpoints. Of course, I'll be adding some more members as the warband grows. A nice big undead beastie maybe. 

As you can see, there's a distinctly Deadite flavour to this warband. Three spear armed skeletons, three with sword and shield, a skeleton captain, two grave guard with wight blade and shield, one with great weapon, a seneschal and a necromancer make up the starting band, the Swords of Dreux.

Gaslands - The Preacher

The Preacher

Wait, this isn't an undead warrior? What gives?

Last week I finally succumbed to the lure of Gaslands. Several friends are deep in the garage already, looting their children's toyboxes or vanishing into local toyshops for toy ca- I mean fine detail 1:72 scale vehicle models.  You can see the results of Witness Weekend: Part 1 here. There is something deeply satisfying about taking a literal toy and modding it with model parts to make something entirely different. The hardest part for me was gluing the wheels. That's where it stops being a toy. No more vroom vroom neeeooowww! for you. Well, there will be, but not as originally intended.

Of course, when I slipped off the precipice into this new rabbit hole, I discovered that several companies supply armour, weapons and most excitingly, crew and drivers. I have several packages of weapons, amour plates, dozer blades, turrets, drivers and crew en-route.

Now, this particular car, The Preacher, is part of the Faithful Sons gang. A collection of mutant evangelists spreading the word of the day of ascendance. (reader squints suspiciously) Some of the crew I have on the way have a definite cult look about them too. I'll try to keep the arms down to two though. Probably. Though there might be a 20mm genestealer proxying as a motorbike at some point. So yeah, at the moment I'm toying with the idea of a post-apocalypse Mad Max style genestealer cult gang. They may end up being just a bunch of mutie nutters with a religious bent, we'll see.

I made The Preacher from an old car that had previously served in Dark Future, some twenty or more years ago. There are several other cars from that time who will now serve as the basis for the rest of the Faithful Sons. I had no dedicated parts for this guy, so I used the contents of my ample bits box for the guns, armour and such. Once again I made use of the new GW Contrast paints to tone down weathering and add depth. The only part of the car that had anything bar glaze, wash and drybrush were the headlights. AK Interactive's washes are a godsend for vehicles. Fuel Stains and Streaking Grime being two favourites. and I also used some Basecrafts pigments for the ruddy dust and rust.

As soon as supplies arrive I can get busy in the chop shop for the next couple of vehicles.

Undead - Einar Haugen, Wight

I'm still enjoying painting the living dead at the moment, so today I present the wight Einar Haugen of the Order of Dust.

I've had this fellow since he was first released back in the 90s. He was one of eight spectacular wights sculpted by Gary Morley. Each of them looks like an undead warlord in it's own right. I needed a couple of wights for my undead warband, so that seemed like a good opportunity to finally paint them up.

The Hateful Eight. Also, check out that vampire.

This was also my first outing with the new Games Workshop contrast paints. My own take on contrast is to integrate it into my existing way of painting and see how it fits in. I wanted the wights to have black iron armour, and having seen a very helpful tutorial from Tyler Mengel on black armour, I set to work.

I've found painting black armour a bit of a challenge in the past. Priming with Leadbelcher spray, I applied two coats of Black Templar paint mixed 2:1 with contrast medium. Contrast medium is a must have when using the new paints. It opens up so many more options to control the translucency of the paint. The effect of the black over metallic was to give the armour a black, oily, metallic sheen. Something that I'm not sure I could have achieved by simply drybrushing over black. I am very much sold on the contrast paints as another arrow in my painting quiver.

I also used Nazdreg yellow to tint areas to look more gold/brassy. Again, this saves me a lot of time without any loss in quality, and that, my disciples, is the painting grail. With washes of red, yellow, brown or green you can add rust, verdigris and filth to further tint the metals. So, with 90% washes and an all over drybrush of Mithril Silver the metal is done. It took about half the time I would have expected.

The wight blade took a little more thought. Several glazes of Waywatcher Green and heavier washes of Scorpion Green mixed with Lahmian Medium built up the colour. I wanted it to look like the metal was suffused with the magic of the wight blade rather than glowing. Again, a drybrush of Mithril Silver over the top finished it off.

Einar here is the first wight from my latest version of the Order of Dust. Their ancestors fought in ranks through several editions of Warhammer, but now it is time to pass the banner to a new iteration of the Order.

You can rest now grandad, I'll take it from here.

My next wight will be hot on the heels of Einar, and has a helmet any undead king would die for. Again.

Undead - Sergeant Wollf

It's that time of year again, and so my thoughts turn back again to my first love, the undead. I'm adding to my undead at the moment for Warcry, and the bug has got me to paint more. 

This guy is from the Triumph of Death kickstarter, from Skull & Crown. At the time of writing they are running their second kickstarter, Triumph of Death 2. For an undead fan, it's kind of an unmissable kickstarter.

Death and the Abbot From Holbein's Dance of Death. Yes, you can get an undead bishop as a miniature.

The inspiration for the range comes from the work of the likes of Dürer, Holbein and Bruegel. I am a huge fan of their work, so I was very excited to see it realized as a range of miniatures. There are some real greats in there, such as skeleton with giant fish. Mordheim anyone?

Wollf carries a rusty but still deadly Zweihänder.

As for Sergeant Wollf here, he will serve as a skeleton champion in my undead warband. I get the impression he was quite the dapper gent in life, as most Landsknecht  were. I bet his hair was magnificent. There are even some wisps of it still clinging doggedly to his skull. I bet he combs it when he thinks nobody is looking. 

I have refined my rusty armour technique a little more on Wollf's gear. Sometimes I like it more orange, other times more red or brown. It depends on the model.

You can see here that the ToD miniatures are actually quite big. Looking at them online I thought they would be quite small, but no, they are pleasantly chunky. Wollf is seen here leading his small but growing unit.

More undead soon, including some super groovy Gary Morley wights.

Undead - King Slough

Today we have a real gem. Painted for the #paintabob competition on the Oldhammer Facebook page, this rotting monarch is from Essex Miniatures. He looks like he's spent several weeks down a well. He was ludicrously fun to paint.

When painting this fellow, I used the painting technique for rotting flesh used by Tyler Mengel of Mengel Miniatures. Here's the recipe should you wish to try it yourself.

As you can see, it's mostly washes. This suits Olley sculpts extremely well. It's also much more fun to play about with washes instead of laboriously layering skin, which suddenly becomes a cloak. Or an ear. Or a portal into the nightmare dimension.

King Slough might be a bit past his prime, but he still gets a big screamy face shield.

I painted the rest of the king to match my other undead. He's certainly going to be going into my Warcry warband, probably as a seneschal. It'll give me a lot of chuckles to see him go to town on some svelt chaos warband, imagining him shouting "What's that sonny?" and "Here's how we did it back in my day!"

"I can't remember why I'm here!"

Look at him there. A born leader. Shame his ears are slowly navigating their way into his beard. Still, many lols are to be had with this guy I'm sure.

Strontium Dog - Max Bubba's Revenge

Something a little more unusual today. A return to the pages of 2000AD, specifically Strontium Dog. What we have here is a rendition of poor Johnny Alpha on his worst day ever. Ambushed by Max Bubba's gang, his partner Wulf is gunned down and Johnny himself staked out and left to die.

This event kicks off the epic Strontium Dog story, Rage, in which Alpha hunts down Bubba and his gang. I was only a lad when I read this one, and it's one of those stories that sticks with you.

This little gem is a limited promotional miniature for Warlord Games' Strontium Dog game, handed out at the 2018 San Diego Comic Con, if my research is correct. Warlord Games have released a starter set based around this very tale, The Good, the Bad and the Mutie. It's most tempting.

The mini came to me via the most excellent Cheetor, a fellow 2000AD fan. It felt good painting something to mark the passing of Carlos Ezquerra, the co-creator of and main artist on Strontium Dog (also co-creator of Judge Dredd) who died just under a year ago.

Oh! A slightly different angle.

Of course, now I have a want to paint Alpha, Wulf and the Gronk. I can't really leave Johnny like this, can I?

Mr Saturday's Big Adventure - Warhammer World and BOYL 2019

In full BOYL mode: Sean, other Sean (TheOttoVonBismark), myself, Thomas (Airbornegrove) and JB (Asslessman).

Another BOYL post you say? Well, this one is special, as it's my first one. After many years crying into my pillow while the BOYL photos and posts roll in this time of year, I am at last able to join in. YEAH! Come with me on my whirlwind adventure into hobby overload. Prepare yourself, this is wildly self-indulgent. (Warning: I have shamelessly lifted photos from all over. Should one be yours and you want it removed I will forward the request to HR and legal and we'll be in touch.)

I set off to Notthingham last Thursday. After I met up with some of my my gamer bros who had similarly arrived early, we went on the rip. Several drinks later some more folks arrived and buoyed up by excited anticipation we had a couple more drinks. A good start in my book.

Adeptus Titanicus - The Misericordia

Only known pict image of the Misericordia, captured by the Baneblade Son of Iron at Kazani bridge, Katara, M41.

With BOYL fast descending on me, I finally finished work my titan for the epic clash on Saturday morning. This is my first painted epic miniature and something of a bucket list miniature for me. I've long wanted to paint a chaos titan. Now of course I want to paint another. In any case, I dug into my hoard of titan bits and constructed the Iron Skulls legion titan, The Misericordia.

It's been many, many years since I played epic, and I had forgotten much of the rules. After some consultation with my epic expert peeps I went for some reasonable guns and lots of close combat fun. The trident in particular seemed too entertaining not to take. There are several chaos titan heads, and this skull-faced one was my first choice for a Khornate titan.

I tried to future-proof this titan a little, so all the weapons are magnetized. After some early insanity I recessed many of the magnets (Magnets do not love paint) bar the ones for the metal arms, which are mostly out of sight and need a bigger magnet anyway. I hear that the carapace weapons are twin-linked these days, so for my second titan I'll paint another plasma cannon so I can double up on the Misericordia if needs be. I painted the weapons in a neutral scheme so they can be swapped around on various traitor and loyalist titans.

As you can see, our titan has a big old tail. The face on it creeps me out some, reminding me of 1980s European stop motion films, which scare the piss out of me. I blended the metal of the titan's superstructure into bone, which I think worked pretty well. You can also see that sweet trident better here.

An effect I wanted to try on the carapace was a cracked and pitted effect. After 10,000 years of service you'd expect a few wrinkles. You cans see it on the left side here. I splashed on a liberal dose of crackle paint (Agrellan Earth) to get the effect, then covered it in a layer of pva glue to stop it flaking off.  You can also see the exhausts. Yeah, I know they have nuclear reactors. Rule of cool baby.

More crackly carapace for you here. That tail, Jesus.

The basing was pretty straightforward. I wanted a ruined, slightly overgrown city. The statue and collapsed tower added a little scale. Clump foliage works quite well for epic too. Some metal mesh torn up for steel concrete reinforcement sticking out of wrecked walls and done.

So, there we are. The Misericordia strides into battle this Saturday against all-comers!

Strontium Dog - Middenface McNulty

Something random from The Mumblings today. Those of you who are fans of the venerable 2000AD might recognise this fellow as the Strontium Dog Middenface McNulty, sometime pal of the main character in the Strontium Dog series, Johnny Alpha.

I've always been a fan of Middenface. When I were a very wee lad I used to love how he spoke in the comic. It was only when I got a little older I realised this was because he was a Scot, from Shytehill, in fact. Here's a wee taste of Middenface in action.

He's no gonnae go doon easy eh? 

At BoYL this year one of  my pals is running a Strontium Dog game (the schicklgruber grab) where the stronts attempt to carry out a warrant to arrest Hitler to bring him back to the future to stand trial. How could one resist a nuts game like that? So as I had picked up Middenface when Foundry were selling off their 2000AD range, I had my man.

I picked some quite vibrant comic book colours for Middenface initially, then dialed it back to give him a little more realism. I wanted to make him look a bit more like the seasoned guerrilla fighter and bounty hunter he is, so I gave him a fairly heavy five o'clock shadow as well, and just a touch of redness on his nose. He is pretty fond of the gargle.

Painting his tartan shoulder pad turned out way easier to do than I expected, though I have simplified it down some to work at 28mm. 

I'm looking forward to seeing Middenface in action at BoYL along with the other stronts the rest of the players have been painting. I'll try my best not to talk in a bad Scottish accent the whole time, but I can't promise there won't be at least one 'Take that ye scunners!' or 'Get that stitched ya bam!'

Terminator Apotheosis - Faherty, Good Dog

At BOYL this year the mighty Cheetor is running a game on the Sunday, Terminator: Apotheosis, where a band of survivors attempt to take on the minions of Skynet.

Each player is required to bring a survivor, and if they want, a dog to help spot infiltrators. Having only recently had a very fine doggie arrive from Shieldwall, I felt the hand of fate at work. So Faherty was born.

Faherty is a mastiff, so I painted him as such. He looks like he's just seen a T800 and is about to launch into an impressive barking session. He's pretty big too, that's a 25mm base, which is fine by me. Mastiffs are large fellas.

Faherty has had some runs ins in the past it seems, what with the eyepatch. Perhaps a vengeful terminator.

+++LET'S SEE YOU SPOT ME THIS TIME WITH AN EYE MISSING. HAHAHA. SNITCHES GET STICHES.+++

I reckon he's as perceptive as ever though. It's all in the nose. Faherty will be accompanying my survivor, Ulysses Jones.

He's a big doggie. Isn't he? Who's a big fluffy doggie? Who is?

Woof, said Faherty.

Genestealer Cult - Brother Medlock

Not every cult member gets fancy power hammers and swanky mining lasers. Some of the brethren just have to make do. Vyrion Medlock here has to put up with a simple, ah, halberd? Machete stick? Knife-pole?

Anyway, whatever it is, it pales in comparison to the magnificence of that cape. Stylish, high collared, shoulder length AND it has a beautiful gold clasp. So impressive is brother Medlock's cape that he has chosen to leave his top off so as not to distract from it's glory. Buck Rogers would be green with envy. Check it out:

With a cape like that the 3rd generation are in the bag.

I've been meaning to paint this fella for ages. Sculpted by Bob Olley, he's based on the original unreleased hybrid that, let's be honest, I have no chance of acquiring. Unless you have one. If you have one gimme it.

In any case, this guy is pretty hard to come by as well, so I was delighted to snag one. I've been pushing him higher and higher up the painting list, and finally, with BoYL coming up he made it. I fancy having him run down the corridors of a space hulk splitting terminators open with his sword-broom.

Medlock is part of a little subset of the cult I want to paint up, a wee family with juvenile hybrids and their parents and ah, pets. The gorgeous Asslessman has already painted up some of them, which you can see here.

For now though, Medlock joins the cult as another aberrant, ready to show those power-hammer wusses how it's done.

Why is he smiling like that? I think you know.

Krakon Games - Multi Part Fomorians (Fimir)

Recently Krakon Games were kind enough to send me some sample of their new multi-part fomorians from their successful kickstarter.

Krakon has made fomorians before, warriors, spellcasters and so on, but this particular set has me pretty excited. Why? Well, as you can see, the fomorians bear a startling resemblance to my favourite cyclopenans bog-dwellers, the fimir. There are very few large (ogre sized) fimir available unless you go hunting for the original range, or pick up the Forge World offerings. Even then though, there aren't too many variants. These fellas change that.

Krakon had quite a few nice stretch goals in this kickstarter. Shields, trident hands, new tails, new bodies, new heads, command hands, tathlum hands (a concrete ball on a chain for throwing) severed head hands, whips hands, sickle hands and loads more.

So what this has done is given fimir fans and players options. Command models for starters. Ranged units. Heavy infantry, nobles, spears and so on. I had a little play with the parts I got. Bear in mind this is only a small selection of the full range.

Tathlum and Hand Weapon: I really like this option, it allows for a sensible ranged unit for the fimir. This guy has a sword as well, to employ once the ball has been thrown. As these are resin you can easily bend the chain to change the pose and make it more dynamic.

Tathlum and Shield: This is the option I'd probably go for. I like the idea of a unit of six fianna fimm launching these in at close range, arrows skidding off the massive shields. All of these examples are on 40x40mm resin bases (not included).

Spear: Perhap a light unit of fianna, scouts of skirmishers.

Pick and Shield: Using the same body, we have a noble with hand weapon and shield. There are several armoured and unarmoured heads.

Tathlum, Sword and Shield: Another tathlum throwing fianna fimm with his shield across his back.

This is five minutes of playing with only a small selection of the new multi-part fomorians. The kickstarter is now funded, but I'm sure if you contact Krakon they might add you as a late pledge or some-such. They're great to deal with. They had a load of add-ons as well, such as oozes, mimics and grudges (undead fomorians).

So, rejoice fimirian lovers, for large scale variety is yours!

Genestealer Cult - Cult Mindslaves

Leading on from my musing on cult mindslaves, I fired two of these revolting meats-sacs under the brush. In case you missed my thrilling justifications for adding these to my cult force, here it is again. Previously (read in 80s American TV voice) on Mr Saturday's Mumblings:

The holy ones of the Wyrm-Forged spread the blessings of the Star Gods under the direction of the grandsire himself. There is one blessed one however, who is only unleashed under the most dire need. One whom even the faithful are wary of, for they sense its wrongness innately.

Known as the Chimera, this scion of the cult is unique. It is an anomaly, its asymmetric form at odds with the perfection of those of the 5th generation. Its body shifts and alters over time as the genetic legacy of the hivemind boils within. New claws grow even as old limbs wither and are re-absorbed. Eyes disappear under chitinous armour which sloughs away to reveal new flesh. In this way the Chimera is a constantly evolving microcosm of the hivemind itself. This is as naught, however, compared to the fate of those the Chimera bestows it's blessing upon.

The unfortunates so infected are reduced to roiling, pulsating sacks of flesh within days. It is as if the patient procession of the normal cycle is overtaken by a berserk haste to evolve. Flesh splits and organs burst as the hyper-active alien DNA rushes to proliferate. Those few whose bodies manage to endure are reduced to less than animals, oblivious to all except the erratic sparks of the broodmind's imperatives. They form a particular bond to the Chimera who can better compel them to serve the cult, albeit in the most rudimentary fashion. They are herded into battle ahead of the main force, their unnatural resilience and senseless fury making them brutally effective shock troops.

They were a hilarious amount of fun to paint. The are naked, bar the disgusting mutations, so once the skin was done they were almost finished. My skin recipe for the cult is very simple. It's all washes diluted to varying degrees with Lahmian Medium. Once I am happy with that, it gets once layer of highlights from the base colour and done.

Did one of you guys fart?

They are pretty tall, so 32mm bases seemed best. I considered using them as aberrants, but in the end the mindless frenzy they would attack with seemed better suited to purestrains, so that's what they will represent. Their 'leader' will be a particularly mutated genestealer, to give my opponents a cue as to what they are in-game. I think 'The Unworthy' is a nice name for them within the cult.

These painted up so quick I think I'll crack on and do some more soon. I'd like ten eventually, a nice wee unit.

Brother Faust uses two of the unworthy as convenient meat shields.