Oldhammer Project - Test Skink

It's back to the 90s today with the first bit of test painting from my diorama (As discussed a few months ago Here). I scrubbed off the old paint and to be honest I was surprised how good the model looked under all of that gumph.

For a project this nostalgic, not just any colours would do. He had to be really really bright and eye catching (so basically as saturated as possible). I also wanted to sort of update and recreate their original scheme which was basically goblin green skin and red frills. With that basic idea in mind, I busted out the airbrush and went to town.

Really old - and really bright!

I started off with a coat of Vallejo Emerald, which is a nice saturated colour that went on well over the black undercoat. After that came a highlight with Vallejo Foul Green, which I added white to and highlighted again. I did a pre-shade with white before blending the white in with Vallejo Fluorescent Yellow. The result was an almost migraine inducing green hue that can be seen several feet away even though the model is about 1cm tall! Pretty much exactly what I was aiming for. As I'm planning to put him in a diorama, the base is just temporary, and will be removed at some later date.

As this is an oldhammer project, I want to keep this bright with the other models. I'm going to use this scheme for the basic skinks, although I'm also planning some different skink schemes as well; particularly for the ones with different frills. It also feels a bit counter-culture; painting old models in really bright colours (when fashion is for Blanchitsu and grimdark) so I want to play with that and really push it to the max, so when the diorama is finished it'll be like a riot of fun and colour. Well, that's the plan anyway...

The Captain's Log Returns - Oldhammer Lizardmen Project Begins

When I first started this blog, I often had odd editorial's filed under the "Captain's Log" tag. As time has gone by, I've dropped a lot of the odd little articles that I used to do, some more due to a lack of time than anything else. Some I'll bring back with time (my terrible fiction will never die!), but it seemed a fitting title to use for this little snippet.

There have been a few years that I've considered entering one of GW's Golden Demon competitions, but I never really had a project in mind. I'm a good painter for sure, but I'm not really up to the standard of those people who spend their whole hobby in search of painting perfection and spend hundreds of hours on every model. The truth is that I don't have the stomach for it, and I've got  enough other things to be getting on with that I don't have that kind of time. With that in mind, my chances of winning anything are pretty low.

That said, it's one of those things that I'd enjoy doing, and would be a great place to test some techniques and work on some skills. I've often thought that it would make more sense to enter something that was more of a personal project - something I'd create to own and enjoy.

So, a few days ago, I got to thinking about my first army - 1990s Lizardmen. I've wanted to revisit them for a whole long time, and to have a go at stripping and re-painting some of the most characterful miniatures of the day. I know that most people probably have no recollection of what the sculpts even looked like back then, but a lot of the metal models were actually really nicely formed and had a lot of character. They'd also make a great palette for experimenting with bright tropical colours and jungle flora, which is something I've never done.

I also absolutely loved the diorama that was made for the Armies Book in 1997. As a kid, I spent what probably amounted to weeks of my life staring at pictures of that thing. It was just amazing at that time, and I recently had the chance to see it in person at Warhammer World too. I started thinking about the 40k Shadowsword that I painted, which was sort of a childhood dream since Epic came out, and I thought - why not really live the dream?

As most people don't remember the models of the time, here's a picture of that famous Diorama featuring them. 

Taking the basic idea, I thought that I'd have a go at making a prehistoric (get it, because they're so old) Lizardman diorama. Something like a jungle scene - a rocky temple backdrop for 2 sides of a base with a sort of central pond. Maybe a waterfall. My old Slann could be relaxing in a temple thing with a view of some type of fish hunting going on below. The idea would be relaxation, they've earned their retirement by now and deserve to enjoy it! I've got pretty much every model from the generation, so a Terradon sailing by somewhere in there, and a submerged Salamander would be easy enough. I'll probably add a bit of a sub plot in with some baddies sneaking up, but I'm still working on that part.

So, earlier today, I clambered through the darkest cupboard of doom. After being assailed on all sides by forgotten childhood memories, Goosebumps books and an old Nirvana cassette tape that nearly bludgeoned me to death; I finally reached my prize. A big box of ancient Lizardmen!

Upon opening the box, perhaps because of the bludgeoning, I became almost convinced that I was in an episode of American Pickers. Yep, I was junk drunk and surrounded by rusty gold. It had the patina, and the price was irresistible!

Oldhammer for the Oldhammer God! I won't be able to use everything, but I wanted plenty of options!

Anyway, I grabbed a bunch of the good stuff and prepped it for stripping. What happens next, who knows, who cares, but at the very least, I expect to enjoy painting a few very deserving models. With any luck plans will work out and I'll get a cool piece I can keep and display with all my favourite childhood models in it - and that'll be pretty priceless. I might even put in a few in-jokes (that Slann needs his Forbidden Rod and Amber Amulet combo for sure!). If it goes well, I'll enter it in Golden Demon just to put a smile on some faces that remember the good old days.

Original metal skinks! Collect the whole set. I know I did!

In some ways, these are the models that I owe a lifetime of fun to. They had hundreds of battles back in the day; probably thousands. I think it's time they retired with the full battle honours they deserve!

Saint Celestine Underway

Always on the lookout for nice minis, I couldn't resist picking up the Triumvirate of the Imperium box. It helped that I actually have an army of Sororitas (Sisters of Battle) and that I could split the set with an avid Mechanicus fan, so I got Celesrine (plus guards) and the Inquisitor as a cool new project.

Rather than just another project in a long line of many, I'm planning to paint her up for the upcoming competition at Salute. I have some lofty ideas and we'll see how that works out as we go. For the moment, I've been trying to decide on a build. I'm keeping her in a few bits for ease of painting, but at the moment I'm mostly preoccupied by thinking about what to base her on. Given that it's a competition it should be something nice and impressive ... Hmmm, it's a bit of a conundrum....

Painting wise, I'm thinking non-metallic metal style gold for the armour. I've looked at a few tutorials and taken in a lot of info, so I think it'll be possible. Regardless it'll certainly keep me busy for quite some time! (And with any luck will be suitably impressive if I can pull it off).

Resin Anime Figure - Part V, Lance 1

Well, despite several New-Year related setbacks, I've been busy again. 

I've painted up one of her lances to look like a piece of marble. This is just a quick post to show the progress I've made in that regard. I'm also trying out some different photography techniques and set-up, which is coming out rather nicely actually. I still have no idea what to do with lights etc, but generally moving them about and taking a ton of pictures tends to yield a few good shots.

I still need to paint the shaft of the lance and the green stuff on her head where I repaired the hair gap as well as patch up a few bits here and there, but the end is in sight!

A Long Weekend - Part 2, Orange Necrons Abound

Well, the weekend is over and it's time to take stock of my hobby target. I really didn't think things would go this well. I picked up the Start Collecting Necrons box on Saturday morning - I spent the rest of that day building it all (finally finishing the stalker at midnight). The next day I broke out the airbrush and went to work. By the end of the day I had a completed Necron Lord and a single finished warrior. I'd also finished painting 3 bases of Scarabs because they were just so outrageously easy to paint!

Then on Monday I went to work on the bulk of the warriors that I'd base coated with the airbrush the day before. It was a bit of a slog, but I painted 11 of them by the end of the day. So, with that my weekend of hobby madness came to an end. I still have that stalker to go, but feast your eyes on the army so far - pretty badass right!

I hope that dastardly Ed from BERSERKER BLADE is quaking in his pathetically organic fleshy shell. The "Start Collecting" battle is well underway!

If you missed out on part 1 and are still wondering what could've inspired all of this madness, then find it here:

Part 1

A Long Weekend - The Cunning Plan Part 1

I have a cunning plan, one so deviously cunning I almost dare not speak it's name. Well, ok it involves painting little plastic men, so let's not get too excited.


You see in sunny old London town, well in the whole of England really the May bank holiday is almost upon us - meaning a long 3 day weekend and the perfect time to start yet another unnecessary and ultimately somewhat idiotic hobby project.


Anyway a week or 2 ago my brother Ed (who runs the notoriously capital letter obsessed blog BERSERKERBLADE) started on a new Mechanicus/Skitarii army. I wanted to start a new force at the same time, so we could run them as rival forces and gradually escalate the engagement. It also seemed perfect as his force had begun with one of the good value "Start Collecting" sets, and I could do the same, but I hadn't been able to settle on any one thing. Then it hit me like a War Scythe the back of the head - Necrons. The most amusing part is that both boxes come with very similar forces - a unit of troops, a silly walker and a leader. Once I realised that the dusty cogs in my brain started to turn and the hobby train was well underway.

The enemy. Enjoy painting all those fine details buddy!

There was one big reason why Necrons appealed - ease of panting. I don't want to give everything away yet, but I have an idea to make them look awesome in an unreasonably short period of time (yes it involves blasting them up with an airbrush). I'm also not going metallic, but bright freakin' orange. So stay tuned and get your sunglasses ready for that one.


I'm actually basing the scheme on this model that I painted for Infinity, but moving the steps around to simplify things. The plan is to be able to paint the whole set with minimum effort. I really do mean a minimum of effort too, but I'm gonna maximise the results. The plan is to be able to paint a whole unit in a day - if it weren't for having to build the things I'd try to aim for the whole box in one weekend!


The beauty of Necrons is that I can get away with a very limited colour palette and can use some of the principles of my own FPM method.

Just to prove orange can be badass. More pictures of this one here.

I also had another cunning plan that was one of the reasons I chose Necrons. As some readers will know I play an incredibly uncompetitive fluff based Chaos Space Marine force most of the time. It's a lot of fun, but it feels like hard work even to stay level with most armies on the field because Chaos just really do struggle to keep up. The Necrons should be fun to play as they're so resilient and about 10 times more powerful, meaning they should be nice and relaxing to play as a side project.

Anyway, with the plan in place we're ready to go. Stay tuned for part 2 where I'll be variously building and painting. With any luck I'll get in some games soon too. Let the fratricidal robot wars begin!

Also this, because I can't hear the word Necron without thinking Monolith.

Mortarion Commission Part 1

Well work is now well underway on my latest commission. This time I'm tasked with building and painting Mortarion, primarch of the Death Guard.

I've completed the build and at the moment the greenstuff is drying. The natural break has given me some time to consider the colour scheme. Obviously there isn't much leeway, as he will have to be presented in full Death Guard finery, but at the same time I would like to make a few adjustments. The Forgeworld version is too mono tonal for my tastes and I know I can make the model look better, so I plan to introduce a bit more contrast into the scheme. An obvious change will be to switch the cloak to black so that it is visually distinguished from the armour. I will also introduce some green details in keeping with the traditional scheme, but that seem to be missing on the Forgeworld model. To finish things up I'll use a red as a contrasting colour for the smaller details.

I'm planning to start with airbrush work to achieve a smooth blend across the armour. At the same time I will use the airbrush to begin a non metallic metal style blend on the scythe blade. We'll see how it goes from there.

As a final step I plan to make a few slight adjustments to the scenic base to ensure that he can be moved in and out of it smoothly.

I'll be posting more as I go, so stay tuned for the next update where we'll be taking a look at how the painting is going (hopefully well!)

Slaanesh Chaos Lord with Daemon Weapon

Sometimes a picture speaks a thousand words. Prepare to be dazzled by my latest project. So far so good I think.

If you're wondering what that lump is on the side of his chest - it's the front mask of his helm. I need to add a few more pipes and details to show how it has been taken away from his face.

Soul Edge? never heard of it.... *GW continue with blatant copyright infringement*

See it is a helm!

Still plenty of greenstuff work to go on this guy, but it's shaping up nicely.

Copyright infringement? who is this bloke anyway?

Salute 2016 - Painting Competition Entry

So last weekend I went to Salute in London. For those who don't know its the UK's biggest independent wargames convention.


A few determined blog readers might remember that I was preparing something for the painting competition, but with a huge bust and not much time it was looking like a tall order. The good news is that I finished in time for the completion, the bad news is that I didn't really have enough time to get everything as clean or perfect as I would've liked. I had even less time to paint as the conversion took so long. My plan was to basically bamboozle the judges with a variety of techniques; airbrush tomfoolery, dodgy OSL, and an unintentionally leaking puddle of resin water. Unfortunately it didn't work and I didn't manage to bag a win, although looking at the hundreds of hours put into some of the other entries I wasn't surprised. Next year I'm going back to 28mm!


I was in good company as a loser though as my favourite entry across all the categories was a White Scars Heresy Jetbike. I thought it was the best thing there, but the judges didn't seem to agree. So a big shout out to whoever painted that thing.


On the upside there were a lot of cool retailers around. I bagged some Vallejo paints that I wanted for a good price. Retailer wise I have to say that Troll Trader was a real highlight for me. I have bought from them quite a few times on eBay, but seeing the jumble-sale like stall covered in great deals was a sight to behold (well it would've been if it wasn't for the perma-scrum around the place as excited hobbyists jostled for position). I picked up some Slaanesh daemons at a great discount - a brand new in box Seeker Chariot for £12 (retail £16) and a box of Seekers for £12 (retail £17.50 - I didn't realise it was such a good deal till I looked it up to write this!). They even had an entire Storm Wing box for £70, that I almost bought just on principle alone.


I was also impressed with the quality of Prodos Games' miniatures, although only having one till was a bit of a bummer, but I'm glad I braved the 20 minute queue to buy some cool stuff . I'll be looking for them in the future to add more to my new Slaanesh based project. I might do a post about them in the near future, so keep your eyes peeled for that one.


There was a lot to see at Salute and as I didn't bring a camera I won't bother listing everything in a never ending stream of bullet points. Suffice to say I recommend the trip into London to really immerse yourself in the Nerdtopia for a day.





The official shot of my entry. How dare the judges side with actual painting skill over boobies!

The work in progress picture, Space marine for scale purposes - no wonder I struggled to finish!
PS. She also likes the Visual Kei band "D" from Japan, as shown by her well guarded autographed photo.

Grabbing a Nice Bust Part 2!

Hormones rage and innuendos abound in the second part of Tabletop Apocalypse's Bust Saga.

In the last episode we established what it took to make a nice bust - shapely, well formed, and certainly of a good size! In this episode we'll be catching up with my on-going project, so strap yourselves in and prepare to plumb the depths of some beautiful busts.

Those who read the previous article will know that it ended on a mostly postman related cliff-hanger (as I was waiting for delivery). Well the parcel has arrived and I now have my package firmly in hand .... that didn't sound right, I mean I've got my hands on my junk, ... my junk on a nice bust, yeah that'll do. Anyway, with the wait finally over there was nothing to do but spread it open and enjoy the goodies.

One thing was clear from the beginning; I was dealing with a very well formed bust. In fact the quality was high enough that I resolved to build and paint her to a competition standard. I was also certain that I wanted to follow through on the sci-fi theme.

The conversion begins in earnest

With my goal in mind I raided my blitz box for some suitable junk to slap on that bust (Man these innuendos are getting a bit strained). I added armour in a few places as well as other sci-fi looking details. I also decided to go sort of "Ghost in the Shell" with the styling.

Space marine for scale purposes.

One other thing was clear - I was dealing with a seriously big bust; something I could really get my hands wrapped around. In turn that would make it different than anything else I've ever painted. I've decided to try and finish it for Salute in London - where I will probably enter under the miscellaneous category- which gives me about a month of painting time. Unfortunately for the blog, I'll be keeping the final build under wraps from now on until the competition, so those crummy work in progress shots are all you're gonna get! (I know it's really gonna burn for the 20 or so people that will read this article. To appease my adoring fans here's a picture now it's in paint (I'm still not giving much away - playing it close the the chest you might say...)

Grabbing a Nice Bust!

I think I need to get something off my chest and really get abreast of this issue. You see that picture up there, well it's one of the best paint jobs I've ever seen hands down, but get ready to be disappointed - it was a limited edition from some company called "Gigantic Miniatues" who only made 50 of them - and don't bother looking on e-bay either as I already did.

Unfortunately for my wallet, just seeing the picture was enough to light a fire in my hobby pants. After painting so many 28mm models I just had to get my hands wrapped around something bigger, so with that in mind I pushed the generous mounds of hobby crap off of my table and embarked on a new adventure to unknown lands.

That's one nice bust!

I'm also blaming this new obsession on Angel Giraldez's Painting Miniatures from A-Z as it was the busts featured therein that first made me want to grab a bust of my very own (and led to several questionable bust related image searches that eventually ended in me finding this mini in the first place).

There was just one small problem with my plan - most busts are horrible!

This isn't the bust I dream of...

Some busts were so bad I had to remove the images....

After trawling the internet for a span of several minutes I realised that I was after a specific kind of bust and not just any bust would do. I mentally created a list of factors and narrowed my search criteria:

1. First of all the bust had to be well formed (writer's note - I'm running out of boob related joke material, better go watch Dude Where's My Car to get back in the zone). This factor also included not being Fugly, or some kind of historical berk.
2. Obviously only a female bust would do - and I had a real reason too (honest it's a good one). I wanted to attempt some airbrush work and a female face would be a lot better for smooth blending that than some craggy dude.
3. It had to be tasteful - this thing will probably end up on display somewhere, so no actual nudity (and if you're wondering why that might be an issue, just try looking at busts on the internet for a while).
4. It didn't necessarily have to be a bust - what mattered most was the larger scale, so I also looked at some larger scale miniatures too.
5. A sci-fi theme would be preferable as I wanted to try using a stencil to get that hexagon effect seen on the unobtainable "Hush" by Gigantic Miniatures.

It was during this search that something occurred to me - I didn't actually need to meet all of the points above - I could convert the bust to be more science fiction oriented. The only thing holding me back was my own skill level, which means that basically as long as I didn't have to sculpt large portions of it from the solid I'd be fine. After I realised that I cast a wider net and finally found a bust I would be proud to spray with the sticky white stuff (undercoat - get your mind out of the gutter!).

So here we are - a bust of Luz from Malefic (apparently). It basically ticked all of the boxes other than the theme, but wouldn't be too hard to adjust (OK it would take some work, but that would be a lot of fun in itself). Being as it's 2/3 of her body already I figure I might as well get some legs on her too as I go. It should be quite a project to work on.

I also found a company that makes airbrush stencils with a hex grid (Anarchy Models), so my dream was getting closer by the minute.

With that the first part of my quest came to an end. Now to wait for the postman and dream of the things I could do to a woman's bust! ... errrmmm I mean a bust of a woman.....

Check back later for the second instalment of this exciting saga - and you were probably thinking there wouldn't be anything this exciting till the next series of Game of Thrones was released.

Disclaimer: I don't own any of these pictures, nor are they my own work. Copyright held by their original authors and all that.