This is more of a WIP than a true hobby update. As I stated in a previous post, I have the following beastmen left to paint (and build) but I’m going to take a hiatus from them at present. So instead, I thought I’d post a few shots of the whole army as it is.
Malagor
2 Minotaurs
Minotaur Standard bearer
Wargor BSB
157/162
Note: These were taken before I finished the Ungor Raiders (and the Wargor and Gorbull BSB models are not shown as they are not built as yet).
And yes the Herd are displayed on an extra large, wipe-able, child friendly, giant toadstool.
A couple of months ago I mailed some of my bits box to one of the guys off the eighth edition for life forum and as a thank you he sent me this little beauty. It’s an Avatars of War model and he even painted it in in colours that matched my army theme (though liberally splattered by blood). Suffice to say I can see my next dwarf outing being heavily slayer themed!
With my first competition game on Friday, I realised I needed to pull my finger out and ensure my entry was fully painted to garner the bonus points for each game.
So I present 10 Ungor Raiders. I’ll try and fully finish them before Friday as there are some details I want to do on them still (nose rings etc.). However in terms of the competition they are good enough as have at minimum 7-9 basic colours used + 2 different washes + a drybrush.
So with these done, my competition entry is fully painted.
This now leaves me with the following remaining Beastmen to paint until the army is complete (or until I buy anymore…):
Malagor
2 Minotaurs
Minotaur Standard bearer
Wargor BSB
157/162
I may not do these at present, as I’m getting the wood elf painting itch again.
However, when I drove through Tewksbury the other weekend I noted the town was infested with coats of arms on half the buildings. I, of course, had to stop every hundred metres to take photos (accompanied by much eye rolling from the wife) and inspired by the designs and colour schemes, I stopped off at my parents to collect one of my original 5th ed. Bretonnian Knights from storage. Could this be the start of a new army? We’ll have to wait and see.
Last year I ran a flying doombull in my Beastmen list but I just used a standard model that I was never very happy with (loved the model but not that the loadout wasn’t represented). Inspired by the numerous excellent conversions that IRO keeps churning out I thought I’d better take a crack at it.
Loads of great ideas were toyed with (many from the guys on the eefl forum, some even my own). Going with light hearted humour and green stuffing a cape and ‘Robin’ mask, to mounting him on a flying carpet. My favourite was the idea of the doombull being held aloft by a gaggle (flock/murder?) of harpies, either as if he were holding a bunch of balloons (but made of the aforementioned harpies) or them pulling a chariot he was mounted on.
(I still like the balloon/harpy idea – think of a dark version of the animated film ‘Up’)
Replace balloons with harpies and house with doombull
In the end (mainly as I’d never used green stuff or attempted such a project), I chose the easy route and decided to add wings to the cheap doombull model I picked up off eBay.
I envisioned the doombull ripping the wings off the twitching corpse of the wood elf eagle/warhawk he had just buried his axe into and then Khazbar, using his dark magic, to fuse the still living wings to the doombull’s back.
The wing colours are quite bright but I wanted another element that contrasted with the large quantity of brown and grey in the army (and they matched the colouring used on the eagles/hawks of my wood elves. Well fancy that, what a coincidence 😉). The green stuff modelling wasn’t too bad (there is a slight quozimodo look to him) and you can see the difference between the left side (which I did first) and the right (which is much better in terms of sculpting). In hindsight I really should have practiced first…
So I present Cattleclysm, scourge of Athel Loren.
With my Beastmen distraction over, I also continued my drive to finish the models needed for my potential wood elf competition list.
A number are currently on the table but the half painted Stag Lord is quite a detailed model, so I put him to one side and went for a smaller model I had been wanting to paint for a while, the Waystalker. I love the fluff of the ultimate lone stalker. The hunt being everything in his eyes.
I kept the paint scheme very simple, various greens, browns and the normal addition of fuscia to add the common army element. Washes were then applied and in a rarity for me, I pushed the boat out and even added some highlighting and other touches of detail (I have to point out the toadstools, yes it isn’t groundbreaking stuff but for me it’s pretty much Rembrandt levels of effort 😀). This model did, once again, reinforce that I much prefer painting metal (over plastic) with white base coats. The colours just seem so much brighter.
So I present Shadestalker, hunter of the Tal Shavoc.
And so it continues. I present Merilel of the Moon, Highweaver of Tal Shavoc.
By all means not perfect but not my worst effort either. As always I kept things simple with bases colours, washes and drybrushes. The nature of the model actually meant I had to apply several layers especially on the unicorn when touching up after the wash and drybrush of the mane. The blue mane was very much for my wife who has been threatening to paint it with nail varnish for a while, as “who can defeat the power of blue sparkles”… I image quite a few people. I was pleased with how it turned out, though I think I need to further highlight it with temple guard blue as I like the drybrish but want it to be stronger effect.
The fuscia and green colour on most of the model is to tie it back in with the rest of the army colour scheme.
It’s been a while since I’ve done any painting, I seem to have just played games recently and any free hobby time was spent putting together the competition pack.
With that finally completed and distributed and my next game not until the end of the month (and with me using wood elves), I decided I’d better knuckle down and final paint some of it.
Digging through my box I started to catalog what was still unpainted (a fair bit). For time saving I decided to ignore those figures already painted (no matter how dire the paint job). The only question was where to start? Having put together a list for the game I discounted anything not in the army and finally decided to deal with the oldest items first.
Dryads
I bought these back in 4th edition when dryads were a ranked unit and could choose to take different tree aspects each round of combat (a bit like war dancers choose dances now). Some of the sculpts I really like, others not so much.
I deliberately went with darker colours as they represent the primal nature of the forest, even the drybrush is just a lighter shade of brown. Basing was my normal ‘that’ll do’ effort but it’s consistent with the rest of the army. The only thing I’m not happy with is the colour/effect of the foliage on them. In retrospect, warplock green may be a bit bright. I’m going to either have to shade it with a darker green, give it a bit of a green wash or make it stand out further with highlights of moot green.
Skarlocks wood elf archers
The second item worked on was my very first GW purchase back in 3rd edition when I was a little nipper. They are still some of my favourite wood elf models and I think the designs have stood the test of time.
The thing which hasn’t, is the 20-25 year old paint job (I know it went straight on the lead with no undercoat) and it will need to be redone in the future. However this was about getting it onto the table and so to do that, I just needed to complete the bases. Ok so it’s a bit of a cheat target but gave me an excuse to post a pic of them 😉.
The eagle eyed of you will notice the unit is short 2 models from the original box. The wardancer is in with his dancer kindred and the final archer was appropriated by my mother of all people (she is a keen archer and lord of the rings fan so has taken 1 of every different archer owned and put it in her archery cabinet. It’s s bit odd but kinda cool, to see medals and trophies interspersed with Wargame figures).
I wasn’t happy with fielding a block of unpainted troops last week. Mainly as, aesthetically, it didn’t look great in the battle report. So for my next list I specifically went with things that were pre-painted.
Running a slightly different variant to my normal list, I realised there were a few things that I would need to paint (and order) before the game.
The first item on the agenda was to paint one of the many primed metal engineers from my endless pile of miniatures. A couple of late nights later and Dolgin Rockfist was ready to be added to the Karak Silvertop engineering core.
This is by far my favourite engineer model in the GW range (and I have quite a few of them) and I’ll admit to it not being my best painting but to be honest it was a rush job (though the photo’s don’t do it full justice). As normal I need to finish the basing. It did bring back to me that I much prefer to paint metal over plastic (in the same way I prefer plastic over finecast). It just has a nicer feel to it.
The second item on my list was to pick up some more artillery bases. A quick purchase off Tiny Worlds on eBAY (they are great for little modelling supplies, very reliable) and I soon received them in the post. A quick paint job later and they were ready for action.
Now technically they are quite a bit larger than needed for artillery bases, which could put me at a disadvantage when using them as it is easier for them to be charged but frankly they look much better than just mounting them on a standard base and if they are placed in the line, the base incorporates the 1″ gap that should be left between units, so you can just from a solid battleline with them, which just looks better.
What do you get when you cross a turkey with a pterodactyl? A Turkadactyl. This started out as a travel blog. Now there is more to squawk about from the Roost. Enter, I have some Stegosaurus to share.
