Half-things and beasty elves

 

Here are the last of my palate-cleanser between-project paint jobs. A little unit of halfling militia archers to go with my Stanclud contingent and some elf beastmasters. The halflings are from Macrocosm, but again I can't find them on the website so not sure if they're still available. They scale well with the Wargames Atlantic plastic halflings and are just a bit taller and skinnier than Old Shcool Miniatures. They're a bit larger but spot-on aesthetically with the former-Westfalia armoured halflings,

The beastmasters I was very happy GW had rereleased for Old World... until I saw the price tag! I was kindly given a voucher for GW for my birthday last year and ACTUALLY HAD SOMETHING I WANTED TO SPEND IT ON! so picked them up at a much more reasonable price with that discount. :D I wanted to go fairly colourful and patterned with the animals whilst staying in the 'natural' realm so went for Eurasian lynxes (the metal feeds on the ends of the ears stayed on to make them look tufted), Irish wolfhounds (not so very colourful), patterned wild boar and a spectacled bear.

Either these have been very popular or GW are using old moulds for them as there was quite a lot of flashing and some detail missing due to mould tears. I don't mind too much, but if I'd paid the full whack I'd have been put out by the quality. Whilst on elves I also painted up a wardancer to take my unit up to a nice round 20.

Half-things and beasty elves

Kev White beauties

At Reveille last year there was a chap with a big box of old Celtos blisters. You may know that Celtos is my absolute favourite ever fantasy range and, whilst they're still available from Brigade models and I have most of them, I'm always keen to pick up more. A good rummage even revealed a couple that Brigade don't currently sell. These got painted up to fill out a few units in my barbarian horde and as another palate-cleanser whilst I decide what big project to move on to next.

 I took the opportunity to get all my barbarians off the shelf and reconfigure them a bit. I decided since I have a lot of champion and shaman type models I could shrink the units right down to 8 figures and have a character and shaman accompany each, the close retinues of powerful champions no doubt. I tried to 'theme' each unit either by the manufacturer, style of dress, weapon or wider theme such as the veteran (oldies!) unit. Here's the current breakdown of units, I may have to get some more Celtos to fill a few gaps, oh dear!

Kev White beauties

Refueling the tank, refilling the ranks!

 

Hi everyone. It's been a while. I've been beavering at Oakbound stuff for ages getting a load of new releases ready. Now it's time to take a break and do another project. I haven't chosen what it will be yet, so as a palate-cleanser I dug out some models I wanted to add to my existing armies (told you, nothing is ever finished!). Some Marauder dwarf pikes, the elf beastmasters I bought new from GW recently (with a voucher, I'm not insane!), some Celtos models I found at a tabletop sale last year (some of which not available from Brigade... score!) and some halfling bowmen. I couldn't decide which to paint so I asked on the Oldhammer Community FB group and the response was resoundingly 'dwarves', so that's what I did. I did actually paint everything in the end, more posts to come in the near future! Worth noting I did NOT buy these Marauder spears direct from GW. The new price on them seems pretty ludicrous to me, especially compared to the fairly-reasonable slayers which can't be that much easier to cast. Especially nuts given you want a decent block of these guys!

There are a few ex-White Knight (I think) now The Assault Group dwarves in there, pic for scale reference. The two on the left are from my other spear unit, from Macrocosm/Theoc- though I can't see them on the website at present. A bit less hunched, but similar in physique.

Speaking of slayers (as I was), here are three more to round out my unit. I didn't have a dragon head, so substituted a troll. That will get painted when I get round to doing the rest of my stone trolls so it matches. The fourth guy here is a newbie from Foundry at BOYL last year. There were two variants released. I believe he's a Pickford sculpt from the same time the very-similar-but-different Harrig the Wise was sculpted and not released. We think they were all variants from the same base, a possible range of dwarf wizards to choose from before dwarves and magic parted company? If so, why are they all so similar? So many mysteries...

Refueling the tank, refilling the ranks!

Blood on the Snow- a tribute

 

You probably know that the wonderful human being that was Matthew Street departed this world last year, leaving a hole bigger than I could possibly describe. For the last few years he had been planning to run a big communal game of Blood on the Snow, an early Warhammer scenario, at BOYL. He had done artwork for it (see above) and planned a scenario booklet to accompany the game. He'd also begun painting forces for it, which you can find on his blog "News from Hell before Breakfast".

Matthew's human fighters are shown above and below. Sadly, ill health and life pressures meant that progress stalled a few times and the planned game never took place. At his funeral a bunch of us vowed that this year BOYL would see Blood on the Snow in his honour, using his miniatures. Now, here's a bit of a sticky problem. Matthew had collected a lot of figures for the game. Most of them were unpainted and in clearly labelled boxes. These we distributed, aiming to paint a unit or two each. After the game they would be auctioned off to support Matthew's partner. Unfortunately, nobody has seen or knows where the painted figures are. They don't seem to have been among his stash of lead. There are plenty of figures to run the scenario with (except in some quarters where I believe Matthew had hoped the designs he was doing for Old School Miniatures' Kev Adams goblin range would fill the gaps) but it seems a shame not to field the models he painted himself.

Against the possibility that his works of art turn up, I decided to try and keep the selection of figures I had taken to work on matching the colour scheme and look Matthew had selected. Teal and white uniforms with red accents and a brooding, high-contrast look. I am pretty sure he worked over a black undercoat and likely used oil washes. Being an artist he was also very picky about his paint choice. I wasn't, just using my regular Foundry paints and Army Painter washes. I also stuck to my usual grey undercoat as I wanted to do the selection justice rather than use it as an excuse to experiment. There are some lovely Citadel sculpts in here (mostly Foundry rereleases) and they were refreshing to paint after months of my own sculpts. I did try to go heavier with the shading and black-lining than usual on them. It used the last of my Citadel Expert Paint Set black ink, but worth it in Matthew's honour.

This is a unit of 20 militia and 20 archers, all mixed sorts selected from Matthew's bags of options. That's twice the size of the units listed in the scenario, but I know Matthew wanted to up-scale the game. He also had plans for dwarf slayers riding wild boars and more greenskin shenanigans, but those are in the hands of better modellers than I! I did, however, also take a unit of dwarfs to paint in the event that the Streety originals do not surface. More on those in another blog post.

Blood on the Snow- a tribute

The Mighty Dark Winged Avenger

Just over a week ago at BOYL I was honoured to have my painting submission selected for the top of the 'Judges' Choice' category (which became the diorama category due to the number of diorama entries this year). I put something in the case every year just to show willing, but it's been 10 years since I last placed with anything so it was a nice treat to have this selected.

The vignette is my homage to the late great Bryan Ansell who we lost last year and whose commemorative BOYL miniature takes centre stage in the composition. I wanted the piece to be about the continuing legacy that Bryan put in place so he stands in the mid-ground and the road down from the citadel continues beyond him where others have taken up his banner and helm to carry forwards.

The background of the scene is, of course, a tribute to the John Blanche Hrothyogg's Tower painting which is shown on the banner. I know this isn't actually the Blanche painting which inspired the Citadel castle logo (as featured on the banner top, originally the staff from Bryan's left hand) but the similarities are there and I think it's a better picture. The model castle actually came from a Christmas cracker many years ago, I modified it a bit to better match the painting. The adventurer on his way up is a 15mm figure I got in a bulk lot sometime ago.

Having removed the staff from Bryan's hand I replaced it with a sculpted version of the 3rd edition Warhammer logo. Having made a full-size one for Diane a couple of years ago it seemed fitting to make a miniature one too. His right hand holds a small six-sided die, a nod to Bryan's insistence that GW's wargames should use the kind of dice that people would already have in their homes from Monopoly, Snakes and Ladders etc. The judge apparently remarked that it was a sign of a good sculptor to be able to pull off a perfectly square, tiny dice with evenly spaced holes. I did admit to Garth when he told me that it's a stock 5mm die! I also added wings to tie in with the 'Dark-Winged' title from the Warhammer Armies book and resculpted parts of the cloak. The colour scheme of the three chaos warriors is taken from the Chaos section of the Armies book. The small shield should really be on the middle level, it's a bit too small to scale well with the foreground figures.

The chaos warriors in the front work well to force the perspective as they're chunkier than the Bryan tribute sculpt. The sculpted heads were my attempt to honour Diane and Marcus as the bearers of the legacy, but how well the likeness comes across (and how flattering it isn't) I am not sure, so maybe we just say it's a pair of gamers bringing the helm and banner to the next generation.

The Mighty Dark Winged Avenger

Against the METAL Horde!

 

As I have said before, I am big on Heroquest. Here's an interesting snippet from White Dwarf showing metal prototype ogres for the Ogre Horde supplement. Now, it is certain as can be that these models cannot be obtained... though you can always hope, but they do, to my eye, bear a very strong resemblance to the Marauder MB12 Giant Ogres which came out around the same time. A coincidence? Neither Trish Carden (or Mauaruder) nor Bob Naismith (who oversaw the Heroquest plastics development) remember any link between the two, but let's do a comparison courtesy of Stoffofdemons...

Those head styles, short legs and weapon options look very close. Even with the other Ogre Horde plastics whose metal prototypes (if there ever were any) aren't shown here. The construction of the model is also very, very similar. I'd be amazed if the two weren't linked in any way.

Anyhow, it gave me enough of a jumping off point to try and do metal (or at least mostly, not plastic anyhow!) Ogre Horde models using MB12 Giant Ogre bits. It took about 6 months of tapping up contacts to get an assortment of bits to start, even getting short legs isn't easy... people seem to have preferred the long one (I can see why!)/ Then I set about sculpting new heads, adapting the available bodies into the pop-buttoned jerkins of the Ogre Horde models and modifying arms to be at the wider position. I feel like I managed to pull off the characters fairly accurately to the four Ogre Horde sculpts.

I then made up some more ogres from the remaining bits in order to give the full compliment to the horde.

Against the METAL Horde!

Questing Heroes

 

Last summer I was given a very special gift- a set of the original prototype heroes from Heroquest. Now, these guys bear only a passing resemblance to the eventual plastics and their story is to be found here, although the actual details remain a mystery. I'd already secured the barbarian, but converted him to have furry boots so this set gave me a chance to have both variants.

The chaos warrior I was not much of a fan of so he found a new home, and the other knight was donated to a friend's Bretonnian collection. Anyhow, they were nice models to paint and a cool addition to my Heroquest collection.

Questing Heroes

Undead artillery

 

For the Big Orange Book table recreation I am putting on at BOYL this year I require 5 skeleton bolt throwers and crew. I don't actually know what these bolt throwers are, I guess they could be historical? In any case I wasn't going to spend ages tracking them down when Alternative Armies produce a perfectly serviceable undead bolt thrower, and have just released a bunch of skeletons which work perfectly as crew. 

I built balsa wood stands for them and bent the bow arms to make them look a bit more similar to those in the picture. There's a nice lot of skully detail on these but I decided to just base coat and wash them to give the dark, nondescript look in the original photo.

The Alternative Armies weapon pack designed to go with the skeletons with open hands includes a bunch of spears. These work quite nicely in size and shape as a supply of fresh bolts.

Whilst I was at it I made this 'enhanced' skull chucker. The free see no, hear no, speak no skellies AA were giving away a few months ago all made me think they were going "oh no!" so I wanted to use them for something suitably dramatic. The idea being that the fourth crewman has been a bit close whilst the gun fires and has rather gone to pieces as a result. It's not quite as I imagined, I find myself a bit short on skeleton parts again! But it's quite fun nevertheless.

Undead artillery

The raised dead

 

The Oldhammer Community is full of lovely people. I know I don't have to say that, you know it's true, but it's worth affirming. The number of people who are still (in these days of giant ebay prices) willing to give stuff away in the name of a good cause is such a great endorsement. Such a thing happened to me recently. I happened to mention in the course of one of my youtube videos that I'm hoping to put on a game at BOYL this year reproducing THAT table from the 3rd ed book:

Now, there are several people bringing models from their collections to do this. One thing I had failed to find, though, was a load of the skeleton army plastics that occupy so much of the battlefield. They're also the best plastics ever produced of course! Lo and behold a lovely gentleman passed me a box at Salute. Expecting a dozen or so skeletons I thanked him and put the box aside to open when I got home... it's busy at Salute. Imagine my surprise to find almost an entire skeleton army in the box, mostly fully assembled! What a gentleman. I reckon alongside some I had already and a proxy unit of 'other' skeletons that gets us well on the way.

Here they are, building rank on rank, with a handful of Alternative Armies recent releases supplementing them. The colour scheme is approximated from the photos in the book, along with the iconography.

I haven't done a banner for them yet as they'll have a 'temporary' banner for the game. After that they'll be used whenever Kemler raises fresh skellies for my undead host.

One of the (many) benefits of the skeleton army box sprues was 1 in 4 scythes. That means you can make that required unit of grim reapers from the 3rd ed armies list. 

There were seven skeleton horsemen along with the foot troops so I've painted those up at the same time. I already have quite a chunky unit of horsemen in the 'dead bretonnians' section of the army, but I wanted to round out this unit to 1o so I picked three of the least knightly-looking from the previous unit and repainted the blue and white into green and yellow. Kinda tempted to do a host more as I much prefer the yellow/green...

The raised dead