Category: Warhammer Fantasy and general Fantasy
Warmaster High Elves
Blog’s been quiet again – little time to photograph lately! But here’s a big update on a small project I’ve been working on lately – Warmaster!
There’s been a veritable renaissance of the game in our area, with around a dozen new players collecting one or more armies with the intent of getting some games in by the end of the year. I believe this renewed interest in the game is due to two reasons: the aptly named Warmaster Revolution rules, which are a fan-made update to the old rules, and the quality and affordability of 3D printed models to supplement or supplant the old GW range. Indeed, this project is the first 3D printed one I’ve ever tackled – took me a while, didn’t it?
As I don’t have a 3D printer I opted to order from wargamerminis.com, a company that prints under license from various 3D sculptors. What draw me to their offer, besides being a continental store with no customs fees attached, is their selection of starter army deals for their 10mm fantasy ranges. After some consideration I decided to go for a High Elf army, as it’s been quite a while since I’ve painted anything pointy-eared!
I like to start any project with a good chunk of the basic rank and file, so first up is a pair of Spearelf regiments. Pictured here is one of them; the other is identical apart from the command models. Painting two-dimensional poses and sculpts is a joy to me, and so were these strips of stoic looking models. Starting from a black undercoat I drybrushed everything silver – making the detail nicely identifiable – then painted the underrobes Vallejo Sick Green, the spear pennants white, and the shields and armour rims – I think – Vallejo Italian Tank Crew Highlight. (I got that colour from the discount bin at my local game store and liked it so much I had to base a new project around it, et voilà!) A wash with GW Coelia Greenshade followed by some highlights took care of most of these models, the rest of the areas were handled as usual except a tad brighter – their smaller scale demands it.
The archers were a different kind of sculpt altogether – strips of two, with one in front of the other. Lots more threedimensionality, which means they took a lot longer to get finished. I’m still very happy with how they turned out, though. I worked from a white undercoat because of the absence of large metallic areas, otherwise everything was done identically to the Spearelves.
For these two characters I used the exact same process as with the Spearelves, with the exception of a couple of extra colours: grey for the horses, and burgundy for the wizard’s spellbook. I also made the wizard red-haired instead of blonde. They’re superb sculpts, I just wonder if I managed to do them any justice. I’m always shocked by how horrendous my paintjob looks in enlarged pictures.
More Warmaster to come in future, so check back. Thanks for reading!
Skaven Stormvermin and a Battle Standard Bearer
I decided not to interrupt my Skaven painting streak, so here are some more rat-things. Part of the collection I swapped armies for is a large unit of metal Stormvermin from around 6th edition, which are fantastic sculpts. They’re also a core unit and can take a weapons team along, so they were the obvious choice on the way to a playable force.
As they are much more armoured than Clanrats I decided to start with their armour instead of the fur and skin. Leadbelcher was thus roughly wetbrushed over a black undercoat, after which all other colous apart from bone, fur and skin were basecoated, then given an all over wash of coelia greenshade. After that, those colours were highlighted back up. I also added plenty of metal weathering – deathclaw brown for rust, and of course nihilakh oxide for the verdigris.
I then turned to the fur and skin, which I basecoated dryad bark before continuing the process as with the Clanrat, and finished with the bone. And voila! Ten more rodents finished.
As for the BSB, he’s a conversion based upon an old Warlord model… Which I broke! See, the banner head had been attached to the banner pole in a bizarre way by the previous owner, using the casting tab at the end of the banner pole instead of snipping it off like most hobbyists would have. I tried to remove it, but banner pole promptly snapped in half. Curses! So I decided to go above and beyond the original back-banner feature and transform the guy into my BSB. I glued a Chaos Marauder flag to the remains of the banner pole, inserted a bit of plastic banner pole to fill it out, and removed the spike on top with a Skaven symbol from the old Clanrat box. I also decided to change the model’s weaponry to something else than the great weapon he was armed with, so I added a shield and a plastic dagger hand. This man-thing is quite pleased-chuffed with how it turned out, yes-yes!
More mishaps followed, however, when I undercoated the model. For some unknown reason the back of the model, and the flag in particular, came away with a sort of scaly effect. I have been using black spray from GW for the past 22 years, and this is the first time I’ve had something of the sort happen. Should I tell my opponents he’s got a 6+ scaly skin save now? It painted over okayish, and on Skaven a little grime and grit can be excused, but I’d prefer not to have this happen again! The paintjob was nothing special, although I should mention I’m still on the lookout for shield and banner symbol ideas.
That’s it for today! More Clanrats have been prepared for painting, but first more of those Russians. Toodles!
First Skaven!
Back in ’19 I was looking to shift some old stuff, and came upon a guy who wanted to swap his old Skaven for practically any 40K army. The choice was easy – I offered up my Orks in exchange. Soulless Autocad-generated plastics made way for a ton of old lead (and some Bob Naismith multipart plastics)!
Then the box ended up in storage for four years, forgotten whilst pursuing other projects – mainly Empire and Vampire Counts, these last year. Nevermore! In the Cursed City box one can find six bases of Rat Swarms, and when I started painting these up I got so enthusiastic about the scheme I found that I just had to have a crack at the older Skaven, too!
After gluing these rat swarms to the correct bases for Warhammer Fantasy and undercoating them black, I drybrushed them with catachan flesh then bloodreaver flesh all over, which is the final colour for their fur. I then layered knight-questor flesh and cadian fleshtone onto the bare skin areas to finish those.
For most of the other areas I applied basecoats of various colours which I then washed athonian camoshade and highlighted with the same colours. I did this for two reasons: 1) I liked how this technique ended up looking on my Vampire Counts with the teal wash, and 2) I have an excess of athonian camoshade pots lying around!
I next took care of the Rat Ogres, Giant Rats and Packmasters which I bought separately, but also years ago. They’d been on my desk ever since being assembled but I didn’t fancy painting them because the Rat Ogres are rather shite sculpts. The way their heads and arms are joined to their bodies is very abrupt, so I had to fix it with some putty. I used the pustules to add some yellow to the colour scheme, and some subtle red washes to the scars. The glowing green effect from the tubing on one or two of the Giant Rats is just some light bone colour with the old waywatcher green glaze over it – a really simple and entirely adequate warpstone glow!
As a last little batch before my attention returns to other projects, I painted up ten plastic Skaven. I decided to attach the tails at an angle so they could be glued to the body in at least two places, which helps both with the sturdiness of the join and with ranking them up. My plan is to collect the newer plastic Clanrats at some point in the future and then count the older sculpts as Skavenslaves – they’re a bit more stooped and their weaponry looks less intimidating, you see. This is also the reason why they have no shields as of yet.
That’s it for now – another small part of the pile of shame has been dealt with! More Skaven to come in the near future, but for now, back to the Cursed City! Or, perhaps finally some historical models again?
Octren Glimscry
Work on my Cursed City box continues apace, inbetween much commission work that is. So here is Octren Glimscry, most certainly the worst-dressed hero of them all. I was glad enough to be able to assemble him without his long stick of a beard breaking off, which is reported to be commonplace.
Anecdotally, years ago I had a visit to the store from a local old woman who had gone off her nut in a rather bizarre way. She claimed to be a member of the Church of the Purple People – Google says it’s an American-based sex cult, ick! – and that she wished to purchase a telephone “for the office of the Baba”. What stood out was her appearance; dressed head to toes in purple rags apparently wasn’t enough, she had also decided to grow the little stubbles on her chin into a long, wispy beard…
So yes, of course I had to use purple on this model!
Big update coming tomorrow, stay tuned!
Shall We Shaggoth Now, or Shaggoth Later?
To my own surprise, it appears this blog has apparently been afloat for ten years. Shaggothdelic baby, yeah!
A lot has changed in my life and hobby in that time. I moved out with my girlfriend, then bought a house, my girlfriend became my wife, and then I became a father. In the hobby I’ve started an unclear number of different projects, sold off a few, painted all eras of history from early Antiquity to the late Second World War, bid adieu to my Warhammer Fantasy roots, rekindled said roots… It’s been quite a ride!But back then in March ’13, what I first showed you was a selection of my Beastmen army, which I considered practically finished at the time – indeed, it was quite playable under the 8th edition rules that were in vogue back then. After the demise of the Old World I gave up on Warhammer entirely for about six or seven years, along with many of my old opponents – and much of the world, likely. The carrying case holding my Beastmen was actually lost for several years in my parents’ extensive basement, my detachment was that bad!
To my delight, however, it seems I wasn’t the only nostalgic soul among my compatriots. My spark was reignited by discovering Warhammer Ancient Battles, playing a number of games with my Carthaginians, or my Gauls, or my Crusaders… and falling in love with the little idiosyncrasies of classic Warhammer 6th edition once again. It took me back to the very beginning of my hobby years, nearly twenty-two years ago. Those same people against which I played my first games are now slowly returning to the fold. Splendid!
Back to my Beastmen, then. I went to my local game store on my birthday last month, and lo and behold: they had a Shaggoth on their shelf. Now the Shaggoth is a model I always adored – it’s so unique in concept, its pose is great, and the quality is among the best GW ever produced before they turned to stupidly large and impractical digitally sculpted plastics. Quite how I never collected one back in the day escapes me, but I’m happy to have one now and I wasted no time in getting it painted. The one I got is a resin version, which turned out to be fine – not the horror of the initial Finecast! Interestingly, the box came with both a square and an oval base… it’s almost as if GW knows who there’s still a huge market for the old Warhammer ranges.
I’m a big believer in the application of uniform painting quality. What that means is, across a given project of mine, I want to paint each model to the same quality, whether it’s the general or a lowly piece of cannon fodder. In the case of my Beastmen I had already broken my rule years before with the Minotaurs, so I decided to paint this Shaggoth similar to them. Those Ungors and Gors were painted very, very cheaply, with plenty of drybrushing, but which opponent would look at them when there’s a big monster bearing down on their line? So the monster needs a better paintjob, which is what I tried to give him.
One thing I had to add to the existing scheme is a formule for the dragon skin. I started from a basecoat of dark reaper which I washed black, then highlighted back up with the base colour, thunderhawk blue and russ grey in volumetric highlights. For the scales, I just added edge highlights of russ grey and some select dots at the edges of fenrisian grey. I’m quite happy with the overall result, although I wonder if I should add a glaze of some green to up the contrast with the red cloth, What do you think?
Anyway, this big boy is ready for his first battle, hopefully sometime soon. Work on Cursed City continues apace – more updates are on the way.
Thank you for reading these ramblings, and here’s to another ten years in the hobby. Cheers!
Crimson Court
Even though I consider my Vampire Counts army to be finished – and it’s a playable force, too – I can’t resist adding to it once in a while. With the release of the Crimson Court warband for Warhammer Underworlds some time ago I initially held off, but I took pity on a box of ‘em collecting dust at my local game store. As usual I put them on 20x20mm bases so they can be used in my Vampire Count army – apart from one model this was a breeze, as the models’ feet are thankfully not sculpted into their bases.
Prince Duvalle (tangentially: Duvel is one of my favourite beers) is the leader of this merry band, and will be used as a Von Carstein vampire. As with the rest of the models I didn’t follow the official scheme in the slightest but painted them according to the rest of my army, so he got an iron/bronze suit of armour and a cloak in the two main tones of the force. I’m particularly happy with how the little trickle of blood inbetween the fingers of his left hand has turned out. The blood effects are something I reserve for the vampires as it makes them stand out wonderfully from cold monotony of the army.
Gorath is a pretty imposing guy; he could be a Von Carstein or a Blood Dragon in my army, and in 6th edition character models with great weapons are always useful! For the skin I went with my usual bugman’s glow – cadian fleshtone – kislev flesh process, with the exception that I used the coelia greenshade wash instead of flesh wash. Makes it look suitably eerie, no?
Vellas is obviously going to be the model to portray a Lahmian vampire. I’m not super happy with the way her face turned out, but it’ll have to do. The hair is the big focal point of this model, which I painted light grey to make her stand out nicely.
Finally, Ennias is a model I probably won’t be using in WHFB quickly, but anyway, he’s part of the warband in Underworlds. I like this one the least of all, and I guess my paintjob reflects that somewhat. The wings in particular turned out a little weird and not matching the rest of the colour scheme. Oh well!
BONE-US MODEL!
My army has been lacking a suitable Battle Standard Bearer model for the longest of time, which is why I recently acquired one in a trade. This is the old 5th edition model first released in 1997, meaning my army, although just a few years old, has sculpts spanning 25 years! It’s been quite a while since I’ve freehanded anything beyond a simple line on clothing, and I guess it shows. Still, I’m happy enough with the model.
So how does this slot in with my current Cursed City focus? Well, some of these vampires are going to be used as stand-ins for their stupidly expensive official counterparts for the Nightwars expansion. Not my idea. many people have done so!
Next update is for a big lad, see you!
The Vargskyr
Heroes are nothing without villains, so I’m alternating between painting the good guys and the bad guys with my Cursed City box. First up is this big guy, called a Vargskyr (Isn’t skyr some kind of special Scandinavian yoghurt? Doesn’t this mean that an Icelandic or Norwegian version of this game would call this a “wolf yoghurt”? Am I going entirely nuts?)
As with (most of) the other models in my box, I based this one on a square base so they can be used for Warhammer Fantasy and, perhaps one day, Mordheim. In this case I intend to use the model as a Varghulf (which doesn’t remind me of yoghurt whatsoever, but as both “varg and “ulf” are Nordic words for “wolf” that means that a Varghulf is essentially a “wolfwolf” – cute!) for my Vampire Counts army – it’s not a 6th edition unit choice, but useful in 7th or 8th edition. My opponents will just have to imagine it has full wings instead of the little atrophied ones on his shoulders.
I painted the model predominantly with a darker flesh tone and dark grey fur, then as with all my Vampire Counts models I washed it all over with coelia greenshade. Next I added layered highlights to all the areas, usually one layer more than I’d usually apply – I’m taking slightly more time and care with these models than usual.
As the model and its paintjob up to that point were quite homogenous I reckoned the model needed a point of interest, so a glowing effect was added quite simply with a light turquoise onto the eyes, the eyelids and around the eye sockets. This was washed again with coelia greenshade before a small highlight was added again to brighten it back up. Effects like these aren’t really my cup of tea, so I’m quite pleased with the way the eyes came out on this one.
Next update will be here soonish. And now I’m off to find yoghurt, although I couldn’t tell you why I suddenly crave it…
Glaurio ven Alten III
When Warhammer Quest: Cursed City first came out I was quite interested indeed – I’m always a sucker for cooperative games, and many of the models in the box looked to be a good expansion to some of my projects, especially my Vampire Counts. Then, due to the unfulfilled promises of a local store owner, my box never came in, and its already high price tag was inflated many times over by Ebay scalpers and the like. Shame! I lost all hope of finding myself a box, and eventually lost interest, too
Then, last year, an acquaintance of mine suddenly put his box up for sale at a reduced price – the effect of a recent reprint – and I pounced upon it. Presented here, then, is the first model I painted up.
Glaurio is the one I chose first, if only because he is one of the models used in the very first tutorial in the rulebook. I never play with unpainted models, after all! I worked from a black undercoat and decided to do my own thing with the colour scheme, yet keep to the same general aesthetic. It would have been silly to give this foppish individual a grimdark, monochromatic scheme, after all.
Still, I’m not super pleased with how the model came out looking. There are some strong areas where I think I succeeded, such as the mirror on his waist and the cloth it rests against, and maybe the jacket as well. But the metallics came out looking too crude, and the eyes, well, they’re a bit shite…
All in all, I can call him done, and with that the score is opened on this Cursed City box. It’s a project I can and will finish this year, and I solemnly swear I’ll put everything on the blog. See you later!
Norse Chieftain
Back in the latter days of the 8th edition of Warhammer Fantasy battles I had a mind to add a Chaos Warriors of Khorne contingent to my already sizable Beastmen force. As it goes with many projects my interest waned soon after purchasing a small force, with just a unit of Chaos Knights and a Champion rolling off the painting bench.
Recently I found said Champion in a box of odds and ends. I sadly didn’t take any pictures of its previous state, but you can rest assured: it was doubleplusungood. I had converted the model with a downright dumb skullface and a different weapon, and the paintjob, sporting the same scheme as my Beastmen, just wasn’t up to snuff. Incidentally, I remember entering the model in a local store’s painting competition, and to no one’s surprise I didn’t win a thing…
So this model has been lingering on my desk for the last few months in a sorry state. I almost considered binning it once. But then inspiration suddenly struck – why not do something different for a change? So I ripped off the head, clipped the tower shield off the left arm, and replaced these parts with spares from some Victrix Viking plastics. Et voila: a Norse Chieftain! I blasted some black spray over the offending paintjob and bare plastic, and started afresh.
I decided to try out some newer approaches to many of the areas of the model; for example, the armour was washed athonian camoshade instead of blue, followed by a black wash. The gold was washed with the new berserker bloodshade instead of purple or flesh wash. For the shield I went with a good old quartered motif, but added the symbols of Khorne and Chaos. I probably won’t be so lavish on normal rankers, though! Similarly, the embroidery on the cloak is a detail I’ll probably reserve for characters.
That’s it for today, thanks for reading!
Free Folk Heroes 3
Continuing with my recent spate of ASOIAF models are these characters from the Free Folk Heroes 3 box. This box has only been out for a few weeks in some parts of the world – in others not at all! In fact I think I might be one of the first bloggers to show off the fully painted models in the box. An honour courtesy of Asmodee’s less than stellar distribution.
I’m a stickler for conformity across a project, so these were painted with the very fast techniques and schemes common to the rest of my Free Folk. A mournfang brown undercoat was washed dark blue all over, revealing the detail and serving as a base and mid tone for most of the scheme. Then many of the other colours were layered onto these area; predominantly the fur, leather and fabric. Super quick, which is great for those very numerous Free Folk!
I tackled Borroq and his boar first; the beast was obviously very quick to get done. Besides a few layers of drybrushing I did add some different colours; grey for the hooves, a more ruddy brown for the snout, and those huge tusks of course. For Borroq nothing much was done to diverge from my basic Free Folk scheme of ionrach skin, sons of horus green, steel legion drab and zandri dust for the clothing, although the huge weapon offered me the chance to add a focal point to the model with a spot of verdigris.
The Walrus and Jon were next. I’m particularly pleased with how their faces turned out – I guess my investment in a new brush has paid dividends? That hulking Walrus was quite a lot of fun to paint up, with few superfluous details to tackle; Jon, however… All those belts,and that silly ‘bandolier’ around his thigh with bits of bone instead of shotgun shells are a bit much. Still, job’s a good ‘un.
Finally, we come to Mance as Abel the Bard, and Dalla. I had the most fun painting up the former, and the least fun with the latter. Generally speaking I don’t like painting ladies – they’re so hard to get to look good! – but this model in particular seems to have been cursed with strange facial proportions. Think ‘charicature of Björk’ and you’re not far off. Not a very exciting pose either. Abel, however, was heaps of fun. What a characterful pose and face! I veered slightly away from the army colours but kept them muted, which turned out great if you aske me.
That’s all for now! Lots more ASOIAF on the painting table, so check back soon.
abrushwithbattles 