Warriors Combat Cards

Remember those Goblinoids Combat Cards I replicate years and years ago now? Well a couple of years back I thought I should have a crack at the Warriors deck, prompted by seeing how many of these figures are still available from Foundry, hence how easy it is to get them. Last year at BOYL I was asked if I'd run the Combat Cards game again in 2025, so I decided to take the plunge and get those greenskins someone to fight against. Warriors seemed the best fit as a) I already had Gladius and no idea what to do with him, b) I already mentioned many of them are still available, c) the statlines aren't crazy disproportionate to the orcs and goblins. So I set about collecting them. As it turned out that took me about a month, painting them took maybe 5 full days, so all-in-all a lot quicker than the Goblinoids! I didn't have this deck as a kid, so the nostalgia hit is not as strong, and frankly I don't think the paint jobs are as amazing as Fraser Gray and Kev Adams' work on the Goblinoids deck. That meant I wasn't so bothered with hitting it exactly right. General vibes are fine. It was really nice working on individual models again after a couple of years of intensive army painting. Definitely more enjoyable than cranking out Empire footsoldiers! I decided to start from a black undercoat as reading WDs of the era I imagined that would be what the team were doing. This is very different from my usual and I haven't done it since the not-greenskin orc army I painted. The main benefit being twofold- I can drybrush chainmail etc. straight from undercoat and then paint around it, no risk of overbrushing silver onto coloured areas. Shading (especially the black-lining that defines much of the painting of this era) is already taken care of by avoiding strips on the edge of each area. I was expecting to have to fight to get colours bright over a black undercoat, but it was surprisingly easy. I was also expecting not be able to se the details very well, that's why I usually prime grey. Also no problems there, with a Halfords matt black spray I could see just fine. I may adopt black undercoats again in the future.

This guy (despite still being available from Foundry) was purchased alongside some other barbarians from the collection of Paul Sawyer. I didn't think much of the transaction at the time (except "oh neat, I get some of Fat Bloke's toys!") but as he sadly passed away recently they have more significance now. I like to think they got a good home.

Here's one of those figures to be found in many ranges. I already had one in the Heroes for Dungeonquest set, but thought I should get another to save having to keep base continuity and to be able to paint the other like the Dungeonquest artwork.

Another from the late Paul Sawyer's lead pile.

This one I believed to be a conversion as I couldn't find him in the catalogues. Turns out he's a gamekeeper. Anyway, I got the variant Foundry still sell, snipped off the arms and added his crossbow, bear trap and staff. A pretty good approximation I think.

Again, I had one fro Dungeonquest but decided to get another. Not one of the ones Foundry sell currently, but I would be very surprised if they didn't have the mould somewhere.

This is a conversion as the one on the Combat Cards is an unreleased Marauder figure and I wasn't going to wait around for one one to crop up. I also don't like the original enough to pay 'unreleased' money for it. My version's a bit short, but I think he's in the ballpark.

The big rarity of the collection. This I guy I wasn't sure was even moulded at GW, but it turns out he was, he's just unrelease. As there's no similar figure in any of the catalogues I could find I sculpted this tribute from scratch.

Another Dungeonquest duplicate, except I'm pretty sure the one I have with my Dungeonquest set has an eye patch and this chap doesn't. He does, however, have a miscast bow. Not as long as it should be. Ah well.

Foundry sell this guy, and I have one in my barbarian army. Rather than repaint him I picked up another, this time original Citadel. I only noticed whilst painting that his quiver and sword project above his shoulder, whilst the one on the cards (and the one Foundry sell) have the quiver covered by his cloak and no sword. Guess this is the 'mould ripper' variation! 

This chap's shield is a little small. I thought I had the right one, but really needed the next size up.

Another from the Paul Sawyer horde. The shields turned away from the camera have all been painted with designs from the Armies book (high elf actually, but suitably Viking). 

Really struggled to get this guy. In the end I settled for one without his right hand and axe- seems a common ailment for this model! I scratchbuilt a replacement for him.

 

Warriors Combat Cards

Cult of the Leering Lune months 8 and 9

Had I mentioned Salute is around the corner?

Salute is around the corner.

That means at least a month of casting, sorting, packing, arranging display stands, replacing old electronics, ordering books and promotional materials etc. etc. etc. As a result I am going to have zero time for painting over the next few weeks except for the miniatures I need to get painted for the display cabinets. I have therefore snuck two months' worth of models into one here, and to be honest I cheated and started painting them in February. It probably won't be my only addition to the army before May as I will have a couple of weekends after the big show but I'd rather make sure I'm covered in advance.

Now I have oodles of infantry it's time to give them some support. Missile weapon and war machine time! Doom Divers are so cool I just had to have four of them. And then got the opportunity to have five so did. I made up one of each in their 'original' form and then did a bit of modelling on the others for variation. 

According to the list, Doom Divers are technically a common goblin thing (which is ok as I have a unit of common goblins in the army so can 'legally' take them) but look at them pretending to be big, scary vampire bats! Definitely night goblin appropriate. In fact, in the colour section of the 4th ed O&G Armies Book they're listed as 'Night Goblin Doom Divers' so there was clearly some confusion among the ranks and I reckon the army list listing is wrong.

Some less effective missile support in the form of 20 night goblin archers. Their job will be to stand at the back and be generally annoying, but if anyone gets too close then, of course, the requisite Fanatics will join the fray. Probably the most effective thing they could do is get charged!

I've mounted them on two 2x5 movement/display trays as they'll want to be spread out on the table. Preferably on a hill.

Some more classic Kev Fanatics for this unit. It's essential for an army with Fanatics to have one upside down with his ball buried in the dirt and so I have. I've also moved the ball (they're very prone to snapping off!) of one of the others to look as if he's just winding up for the swing.

I've wanted to get this gobbo jester from Foundry for ages but he wasn't available online and I couldn't find him on the racks at BOYL. I asked at NOTLL and the helpful attendant managed to find me one in their casting room. He'll be another madcap magician for the ranks. His assistant was a freebie from BOYL, but I forget who from so I can't give them the appropriate shout-out. Let me know if you do so I can update!

As I was hunting Foundry for the jester I spotted this chap in one of the cabinets and they located one of them for me as well. You can never have enough shamans in a gobbo army, right? I guess he's a bit forgetful as his assistant has to write the spell words really big so the shaman can read them at a  distance as he is borne away at speed.

 And a bonus. I had my Army Standard Bearer and his wolf undercoated so thought I should get him done alongside the rest. I imagine him just about to leap onto the back of his steed and tear off at great pace. The wolf is from the Dungeon Monsters Starter Set and is a nice big 'un befitting the carrier of the chief's banner. Hopefully he can get himself quickly to wherever morale is needed on the field!

Points then... Um.. I must confess I am a bid mixed up here as I haven't actually painted what I had intended and costed out. Here goes:

March- 5 Doom Divers @100pts each is 500pts (nice easy start). 5GC each so 25GC total. Brings the War Machine total to 586pts within a 3476.5pt army. That's bang on for GC leaving me with 8.85 left over still.

April- 19 Night Goblins with short bows (35pts, 10GC) and a big boss (33pts, 1.5GC). Two Shaman Champions (166pts, 4GC). Takes the Mobs total to 1680.5, the Characters total to 1463 and the army total to 3710.5. 15.5GC is 9.5 under leaving me with 18.35 in the bank.

The battle standard is 69pts (without a magical banner) and 2GC leaving me heading out of April with 16.35GC to spend and a still 4th edition tournament legal army. Get in.

Cult of the Leering Lune months 8 and 9

Heroes for Firetop Mountain

 BOYL approaches once more. This year my plan was to take nothing and just join in with Paul's big game that he's been working on painting for the last... three? four? years. Sadly that's now not able to happen so at our GROG meets we have been discussing what to bring. We've settled on some of the GW bookshelf board games and I'm going to be bringing Warlock of Firetop Mountain.

This is not my original set which I picked up (second hand) from a wonderful independent games shop in Bournemouth around 1995. That one only had two of the heroes in- the dwarf and barbarian. I spent the early years of Oldhammer (around 2009/10 I guess) picking up the rest of the heroes to complete the set and even ended up with a spare barbarian which I painted for an Oldhammer Forum warband-

Sadly this now-completed set somehow got lost in the move to our current house (I keep imagining I will discover it behind a bookcase sometime). Last year when I had Covid in the run up to BOYL I found a reasonably-priced copy on eBay and decided to replace it. The box isn't in quite as good condition and it was missing the rules but all the pieces were there. It seemed like a suitable thing to take to BOYL this year. Just one issue- the heroes weren't painted. Could I get them painted in time?

Yes, it turns out that I could. They were surprisingly quick and fun to paint for such basic models. They are, I think, the second set of boardgame plastics GW produced (the first being Dungeonquest a year earlier) and the Psychostyrene Dwarf and Drastik Plastik orcs had been produced for Warhammer. A year later the classic Regiments set would hit the shelves with some models that a light years ahead of these in terms of detail and execution, but weirdly even the Dungeonquest figures are probably better executed than these guys. Nevertheless they're still better than most of the soft plastic board game toys supplied by a lot of modern manufacturers. I've kept them on their original plastic disc bases but mounted these of 20mm rounds (they are small spaces after all!) and disguised the edges with some putty paving slabs.

But now there's a problem... I have three weeks and two weekends left before BOYL and as always another seed has been sown... Could I get figures for all of the encounters? What about all the monsters? Wouldn't it be cool if everything was represented?...

I had a rummage in my lead pile and yes, I could, but would I have time to paint them? Damn! Another high pressure BOYL painting challenge when I'm meant to be finishing off my Skaven! Stay tuned... 

The classic quartet of dungeon heroes.

Heroes for Firetop Mountain

Happhyia Siddence, lord of wyrms

 

Here's my November submission for the odds and sods painting challenge, a high elf now wood elf lord on a forest wyrm.

The rider is probably the most-painted model in my collection since to my reckoning he has been stripped twice and now painted three times. He's one of the few figures I kept in my collection from when I bought him new from Games Workshop in probably the late 90s. I have fond memories of going with my grandmother to buy him from the Basingstoke store having seen him in White Dwarf. On the way back I got to watch my grandad pilot his beloved RC boat around the duck pond, a rare outing indeed- as an engineer he spent much more time working on it than actually driving it. In his time this model has been a high elf general and a vampire count (painted in gold armour with fangs) and has now found middle ground as the army standard for my wood elf force. I still have his horse although it was chopped about a bit for use with my undead, it's getting a rebuild for a future odds and sods month. 

The mighty dragon will be instantly recognisable I'm sure as Kargos the Despoiler. I picked him up cheap as his wings and a back leg were missing whilst the right front leg was broken. No great problem as I don't necessarily rate wings for a forest-dwelling dragon. The rear leg was replaced by one of the dragon ogre alternative limbs I sculpted a few years back, this just took a bit of chopping and the addition of some scales. I raised the right limb to make it look like he's about to cuff some enemy and bent the left to bear his weight. I puttied scales over where the wings would have been and moved the rider to sit on his back rather than his neck, a much more suitable place to ride a beast that walks on all fours.

There's a significance to the dragon choice as well here. I remember seeing a photo of a 'firedrake' with an elf rider in a friend's 'old' (in the nineties) copy of White Dwarf. This image was imprinted on my mind, but looking through my own collection now I can't find it and have come to the conclusion from pose and subject matter that it must have been this dragon and his rider. The official paint job doesn't match the image from my mind, in my head what I saw was an earthy, brown-scaled dragon and I don't remember it having wings. A dragon without wings was somewhat novel in my young mind and lodged there because of it, in fact my love of wyrms may well stem from that image. I'm not a fan of the Marauder elf lord, really sorry, it looks lumpy and chunky. That could just be the obscenely bright colour scheme the original is painted in. Once again the picture in my mind was of a refined, slender elf perched atop his steed. Ah well, there you go, memories play you false. If anyone does know of the picture I am trying to describe let me know, it would be great to know I didn't make it up! Perhaps it was a Golden Demon entry using Kargos? I have tried to strike a balance with my painting and make him definitely a red dragon (to complement the green of the army) but mute the colours to make him look a bit more natural than the 'official' scheme.

Originally the model was going to be my wood elf general, however the theme of the odds and sods challenge this month is 'Grandeur' and so I decided it would be even more grand to make him the army banner. I didn't realise just how massive his sword was until I cut it off and slung it by his waist! Good job he isn't lugging it around on foot. I mapped out an intricate celtic knot design on photoshop but when I printed it out realised there was no way it was going to be possible for me to paint it at scale. Instead I had another brainwave. You'll probably know I am a bit of a massive Bob Ross fan. There's one episode ( a 1-hour special no less, on YouTube so check it out) called 'The Grandeur of Summer' so I thought that it would be entertaining to try that in miniature. A bit of extra Grandeur! That's the mountain side by the way, I tried a different, foresty image on the reverse. Pretty happy with how it turned out, especially against the Ted Nasmith mountain backdrop (see above).

The view of the dragon you'd want to see, versus the view you definitely wouldn't! The banner pole has proved to be a complete pain in the backside. It's a cast lead banner pole and is really bend. Although I drilled the hand out to receive it and added the leafy hand guard (some little jewellery pieces I had kicking around) it still isn't sitting straight. I have also just noticed in the photographs that the bottom part of the pole seems to be missing, not sure when that fell out! It should be below where the sword pommel would be to avoid the banner looking overbalanced at the top. I will have to hunt around on the floor to find where it has fallen...

Happhyia Siddence, lord of wyrms