The 333 3rd Ed Challenge- Bases and banners

 I did manage to get to the end of the challenge before the end of July, honest, just... but I have been ill with Covid over the last week and so haven't been able to photograph and post. Previously I had imagined that if I got Covid I would just have a nice clear 10 days to do a bit of painting, sculpting and some blog posts... but no, that's really not how it panned out. Trust me, this is not a thing you want to have. Be safe, get vaccinated, wear a mask. Still not quite back to normal but well enough to take photos and post them so here goes...

Several years ago I painted a bunch of civilians for a big sandbox game. I left of all the basing thinking I would do that quickly at the end... big mistake! It's time consuming and booooooring doing so many bases all at once. With this challenge I got the groundwork on the bases done as I went, just leaving the applying of greenery until the end. Also a mistake! Hours and hours of dabbing foam and static grass... thank goodness for YouTube.

I also left the banners until the very end. When I was a kid I would leave shields and banners and usually not get to them. I didn't want that to be the case here so dedicated some time to getting the banners (only three after all) painted with their variations on renaissance Italian, Spanish and Papal heraldry. I must confess there is one piece not done- the banner top for the main army banner. I had planned for this to be a big bull's head, but I don't have one to hand and didn't feel up to sculpting one so it has remained unfinished. I do have a spare cross from the top of a Warmachine model I'm not using so may swap that in instead.

I needed something relatively quick but interesting to break up the monotony of the bases so knocked out a couple of extras to join the force. A dark elf courtly lady to round out the unit to 10 and a chariot I sculpted based on an unpublished Tony Ackland drawing. Mr Paul Douglas painted another as a gift to the great man himself which he handed over at BOYL. I think Tony was pleased with how it came out.

So that's it. Army done. Right, what's next...

The 333 3rd Ed Challenge- Bases and banners

The 333 3rd Ed Challenge- Retinue of Chezatro Bourgeoia

Another month, another RoC warband as rolled on YouTube! This is going to be the final random-rolled warband, from here on in I'll be pointing up from the army list based on models I have to hand. These fine fellows are the retinue of Chezatro, son of Vitolio and brother to Luxetia. Chezatro's merry band are in charge of maintaining the borders of the city state and do so with great vigour, bringing back with them spoils from those they have seen off. In this case they have a few captives in their ranks which they are forcing to do a bit of fighting alongside the state troops.

I have had these RAFM Regiments of Blood miniatures for a while, unsure of what to do with them. I think they're meant to be vampire troops, but I had half an idea of using them as dark elves. I knew I wanted to use the Kaleb Daark model as Chezatro so these skull-armoured dudes with their pointy shoulders made a suitable accompaniment for him. For rules purposes they are Chaos Thugs.

I put my small handful of 'more modern' witch elves into the unit too, figuring their pointy shoulders fitted in fine. These ladies are the handlers of the captive beasts driven to fight in the front rank.

I still need to work on leopard print, not quite there yet.

This is a Krakon Games not-Fimir 'Wanderer' that I have needed to paint up for some time. I decided to go slightly differently skin-toned compared to the rest of my Fimir as he won't be joining them for battle. Slaanesh+Fimir=something very predictable so I decided not to go down that road. Instead I figure this chappie now acts as an advisor to Chezatro, putting his knowledge of terrain to good use in planning ambushes and battles. He may wear chains still but I doubt he's running anywhere, his handler has a grizzly reminder of the last of his kind who refused their hospitality.

The orcs are a little more recalcitrant but their handlers know how to yank their chains. I still have to do the banner on this dude- the remnant of his tribe's banner now daubed with cult victory symbols.

These Ral Partha Europe (ex Heartbreaker?) orcs were really fast to paint. Mostly washes over a zenithal undercoat and inks on silver armour. I should definitely have done my orc army that way, they'd have been so much quicker to finish!

 

And, of course, Chezatro himself. Looking slightly more pink than the model is usually depicted, but with enough black and white to remind him of his heritage.

The 333 3rd Ed Challenge- Retinue of Chezatro Bourgeoia

The 333 3rd Ed Challenge- Retinue of the Crimson Countess

 

This was originally going to be the warband of Luxetia Bourgeoia, a half-elf sorceress and daughter of Vitolio. However, having rolled the warband (you can see it for yourself on YouTube) I decided that the attributes I had rolled better suited the strange, desiccated sorceress I picked up in the original Diehard Miniature Kickstarter. I therefore decided to save Luxetia for December and give this warband to a previously un-envisaged character.

The Crimson Countess is the great, great Grandmother of Vitolio Bourgeoia. For half a decade she has been believed to lie interred in the family crypt. In fact she had sold her soul to Slaanesh many years before her offspring took the same path. Having attained semi-daemonhood she was summoned by Vitolio to help with his rise to Psychopomp and now she reigns behind the scenes 'advising' her descendants on how to hold onto power as firmly as she did.

The Countess' retinue is made up of the Crimson Bulls of the Bourgeoias. These terrifying fiery beasts and sent to quash any rebellion against the house. 

These minotaurs were converted many, many years ago using Ogre Kingdom bits to fill in missing weapons and puttying some rough flames to hide damage to the heads and make it look as if they were stepping out of fiery portals... to disguise the fact that none of them had their other legs! My original intention was to use them in a Chaos Dwarf army around the time of Tamurkhan, but that never happened and they languished unpainted for ages. My early sculpting work was too stubborn to be undone so I just had to paint it and hope for the best! 

I only rolled two minotaurs and failed the roll to make one a hero, but as I was painting minotaurs I thought for consistency I would paint all the ones I had. Including my absolute favourite, this Trish Morrison minotaur lord, he's a beast! When the points are totted up at the end and extra units recruited I'm sure I'll find some allowance to add the extra mino and a hero to the warband.

The three beastmen I decided should continue the bullish flavour so I picked out three lesser minotaurs to represent them. I have since found a fourth lurking on the shelf who may have to join them! The one in the middle is one of my absolute favourite Chaos models (two in one band!) so I really enjoyed painting her/him/it(?) up at long last.

I also topped up the points with part of Vitolio's warband I didn't have last month. As previously mentioned these are the Choir of Menoth Warmachine figures, nice ecclesial-looking acolytes for the dark pontiff. There are actually only two poses in here, I bent the scroll arms a bit for variety. Unfortunately they really don't rank up so well on 20mm bases...

The scrolls read corrupted versions of some of the 10 commandments. In true Slaaneshi style they seem like they are promoting proud liberal values but taken at face value they can all be twisted to serve sadistic purposes.

And here's the whole force so far. Definitely getting somewhere at 20% of the completed army and still having a nice cohesion thanks to a deliberate choice of three colours used in various mixes throughout.

The 333 3rd Ed Challenge- Retinue of the Crimson Countess

The 333 3rd Ed Challenge- Retinue of Vitolio Bourgeoia

A bit later than planned due to Salute prep, here is the first month's offering for the 333 3rd Ed Challenge ahead of next year's BOYL. This is the warband of the general, Arch Psychopomp Vitolio Bourgeoia. Vitolio is the patriarch of an influential Tilean family and governs the independent city state of Castello Capezzo. Isolated as a self-contained mountainous principality the state has proved fertile soil for the rise of a Slaaneshi cult headed and given respectability by the sponsorship of the governing family. Beastman mercenaries are employed and equipped by the Bourgeoias as a personal guard and Dark Elves have settled in the city, both are treated with absolute normality by its citizens who enjoy peace, prosperity and a doctrine of pleasure.

As a Slaaneshi warband the dominant colour had to be pink, right? I wanted something a bit more vibrant than the RoC pastels though, and also more 'uniform' as an official city state military. Since 'debased pope' was very much the starting point I decided to take the colour scheme from the Swiss Guard, shifting the reds into pinks to align with the cult. Bases aren't quite finished yet, I need to do greenery on them.

The ex-Grenadier dark elves by Mark Copplestone fit perfectly with the 15th Century Italian theme. They are, however, a bit wide in their stance and don't easily fit on a 20mm base so I have had to do a bit of cutting and bending. Theoretically this is a squad of 8 dark elves with crossbows, but there are a couple of the sword-wielding models that don't have crossbows slung from their belts. Most do. You'll also notice there are 9... I fully intend to add a hero to this unit out of remaining points once the core warbands are sorted and thought I may as well paint him now. He's the guy with the mask and cool ruff.

The beastman unit is converted from the regular 4th ed plastics. I felt they looked too regimented for a wild beastman band but give them slashed sleeves and breastplates and they make a perfect mercenary/imperial beastman contingent. I experimented putting a tellerberet on one but it didn't really sit well with their mohawks so didn't take it any further. I went for black rather than the 'official' white for Slaangors as I thought it would make for a bolder unit. If I end up adding subsequent bestman units the heroes will be marked out by white hair.  

The corrupt pontiff himself is a Foundry Swashbuckler Dwarf on a Foundry Darkest Africa donkey. I resculpted his nose, added a mitre and gave him legs. I also reposed the donkey's legs a bit to make it look like he was splayed under the weight of his burden.

On to month 2! I'll be rolling up November's warband from Realm of Chaos on my YouTube channel so do take a look. :)

The 333 3rd Ed Challenge- Retinue of Vitolio Bourgeoia

The 333 3rd Ed painting challenge- Month 1, planning, plotting, scheming!

What to do when you find yourself back at work full time with no daylight hours to hobby in, the pressures of adult life pressing down on your shoulders and busy-ness sweeping the joy from 'free' time?

You take on a new project of course!

Dave, perhaps better known in blogsphere as Snickit, has launched an army building challenge to run up to BOYL 2022 which he has titled The 333 3rd Ed Challenge. The aim is to paint 333 points of troops each month until BOYL, resulting in an (approximately) 3000 point force to put on the table. Armies can be chosen from any 3rd Ed era list. I have a fair whack of Chaos troops unpainted on my shelves so this felt like a good excuse to get some paint on them. 333 points of Chaos Warriors is not many models, that should be doable, and it would mean not having to buy new miniatures... right?

Of all the Chaos powers it is Slaanesh that most draws me. That's something that's probably best not probed too deeply (as the actress said to the bishop). Essential sleaze aside I like the more complex image painted in Realm of Chaos that Slaanesh is about love of comfort, luxury, easy life. That's why it rubs up against Khorne which (despite a love of blood and skulls) feeds off love of unrest, conflict and challenging situations. My idea, then, is to build a more covert Slaanesh force than an out-and-out display of genitalia. Rooted in the history (real and propaganda-motivated) of the Italian City States of the 14th and 15th centuries with houses like the Borgias, Medici, Sforza and Malatesta vying for control the plan is to build a Tilean force representing a corrupted family and their troops. Each member of the family would head up their own warband rolled from Slaves to Darkness then I will fill the remaining points with appropriate troops to make it a semi-viable army.

For the leader of the army I wanted a grotesque caricature of a pontiff representing all the worst features of the medieval papacy, an institution rife with the opulence and degeneracy that Slaanesh would be proud of. Having thought about it I suspect there is also more than a little influence from the Sandman comic series where a particular Psychopomp (conveyer of souls to the next life) is depicted as an obese and pox-scarred villain. There are a few cardinal/bishop miniatures around but none that really play on this grotesque image of a supposedly holy figurehead gone bad. With the release of the new Dune movie imminent I wanted a fantasy Baron Harkonnen to head up the debauched stream of filth. Jamie Loft of Old School Miniatures suggested using a Foundry orc as a basis (they are big fellows and appropriately garbed in renaissance attire) but it seemed daunting cutting off the arms, legs and head to make something that looked overweight but humanly proportioned. HOWEVER, the dwarfs from Foundry have arms about the right size and no legs to speak of... 

At BOYL earlier this month I had a good sift through the Warmonger dwarfs and decided on one that would suit my purposes. I would have liked to have Kev Adams sculpt my head on him as he sometimes does at BOYL, but this year he wasn't sculpting so I will have to do that myself, adding an excessive papal mitre. I wanted him carried by an overburdened donkey or mule so again went diving into the Foundry ranges to look for one. Almost all of their pack animals are sculpted with baggage attached, which wouldn't work for this purpose, but I did find one in a Darkest Africa explorers pack which will suit. It probably needs the legs reposed a bit to indicate the enormous weight of its rider.

Having selected the general it was time to head to StD and roll up his personal contingent. Having selected his initial 'reward' (enormously fat) I decided to roll twice more for his personal attributes giving him rotting flesh and a crown of flesh (tongues) which I guess he hides under his mitre! Or maybe it makes up the mitre itself... Suitably disgusting attributes for the slimy wretch. I rolled him 3 sets of followers- 9 Dark Elves, 8 Chaos Cultists and 10 Beastmen. 

The Dark Elves I have a handful of in my collection, but they look too war-like to fit comfortably in the higher levels of the corrupt court. I would have loved to do a unit of Foundry's Revenant Elves but at £7 each that's not going to happen (I did buy one represent the leader of another band). Instead I have opted to buy some of the former-Grenadier Dark Elves from Forlorn Hope, excellent value and a great company keeping some lovely old miniatures alive. These will work nicely with the theme and have the added advantage they already have crossbows (an arming option from the StD followers list).

The cultists I would like to have as cardinals, but whilst I would love to have Victoria Miniatures' Monty Python Spanish Inquisition featured again the price drives me off. I'm struggling to find alternatives, monks with sculpted hats on still looking too dishevelled. One option I am considering (and will probably go for) is the Warmachine Choir of Menoth miniatures. They look suitably ecclesial, not too sci-fi and like they could easily be given cardinal-type headwear to mix them up a bit. A bit beyond my budget at present still, so might have to back burner this unit for now and see if ebay will throw any bargains my way.

I have a lot of beastmen, including a fair few non-goat beastmen which are my preference. However they all look like an unruly, savage mob far better suited to a warrior warband than an ecclesial one. They will (depending on rolls of course) get use in one of the other warbands later on. For this one I have decided to go with the 4th ed monopose plastic beastmen that seem so universally unpopular. Their regimented look makes them fit nicely for an honour guard and it's my intention to putty clothes and gear onto them to make them look more like a papal guard. I picked up 30 of these from generous people at BOYL who knew I was looking for them. I'll start with the 10 I rolled for now and probably expand them when mopping up points at the end.

Leaving aside the 8 cultists for now then the first month's painting looks like:

Psychopomp Prospera Vitali Bourgeoia

Human 20 Hero (150pts)

9 Dark Elves with crossbows (90pts)

10 Beastmen (100pts)

That's 340pts, which fits just fine. Better get cracking though, there's a fair bit of putty and conversion work in there and we're halfway through October already!

Oh, and as to not buying any new miniatures... none of these were in my collection before the beginning of October! I didn't buy the beastmen, but the rest were purchases especially for the project. Good start there Fimm!

The 333 3rd Ed painting challenge- Month 1, planning, plotting, scheming!