Fantasy Orc Army - first 500 points complete!

 

As promised, I'm back with some proper photos this time around. If you missed my last post, I did a head count on my progress from the last year and found that I'd painted 387 models. Getting them all on the table was a challenge in itself, and there was no way to get nice army shots, so today I'm back with a focus on the small new orc contingent I've been working on. You might ask, where are the Goblins (there is one hiding up the back), but the focus is on Orcs so they can ally with my brother's night goblin force. 

Overall, I'm really happy with this army. I've never really found a greenskin recipe that I liked until now, and the oldskool reds and blues set them off nicely. There's a mix of models here, with plastics from 5th Edition mixed in with Battlemasters orcs and a classic metal command for the big 'uns. I got a plastic troll for my birthday a few weeks ago too, originally from one of the starter sets. I'd love to source a few old metal stone trolls, but they're like gold dust! 

Classic plastic archers (below). Single pose sculpts have really grown on me. They look great when properly painted and they really take me back.

Savage orcs (below) are mostly Harelequin Models Barbarian Orcs, which are available now through Black Tree Designs. They were a bit of a Christmas present for myself. If you're looking at them and thinking it's hard to tell them apart from the GW ones, it's because they were also sculpted by Kev Adams in the 90s who worked on a lot of the older metal GW orcs. Speaking  of Kev Adams, the warlord model at the top of the page now known as Oglud Bonebeater is an old Heartbreaker Miniatures models also sculpted by the guy. It turns out he's basically single handedly responsible for filling the world with the joy of grinning derpy orcs - just how I like them! 

The Big Uns - I'm planning to split my orcs as the army grows so that the 5th Edition plastics (ones without helmets, and slightly smaller) will form a unit of regular orcs while the armoured battle masters orcs will be the more elite Big Uns. 

You'll notice a few spare models in the background that will be rolled into later units, they were out for the full head count!

The scenery in these photos is all stuff I've been working on too and us scratch built as a set to match the army. Speaking of, I hand made the mushrooms on their bases too with some regular milliput. It turns out that it's not hard to do, and seems to be a pretty good thing to do with leftover putty! 

Blood Dragon Vampire in 3d! (Soulblight Gravelords Blood Knight)

 

This is a first on the blog - miniatures in 3d! and you don't even need goggles to do it. I knew we'd get there one day. Finally something futuristic.

This is sort of a test post, and more photos will be coming in later. A month or two ago, I posted about re-doing my Lizardmen, and following on from that, I've been re-vamping (pause for laughter), my Vampire Counts. I have to admit that some of the new "Soulblight Gravelords" models are rather exquisite and I was ... transfixed... by the new Blood Knights. Blood Knights actually weren't a thing in my edition, but mounted vampires were as far as individual characters go. I'll probably be using this one as a Battle Standard Bearer when the time comes, although she might be a Count for now while the force gets off of the ground again. 

I will try and fine-tune the 3D image making process for better results in the future. I got a cheap spinning solar display stand on eBay and basically just put a backdrop up and quickly filmed the model, then converted to a Gif. There is room for improvement, but it's pretty cool. Hopefully it'll display properly on the blog!

500 Point Warhammer Fantasy Skaven Army (Also the end of Monster March)

Although this is a post about the Skaven I've been working on, it's also sort of the end of Monster March as well. This army was entirely built and painted during the last 2 weeks of March!

It sounds really fast, considering it's 40 models, but I realized early on that I would need to be painting fast if I wanted to actually ever finish a Skaven force. This is only 500 points, but is already 40 models!

I've used a few classic metal models and some of the more modern plastic kits and bits from Island of Blood. You can see the stone-age Warpfire Thrower and Poisoned Wind Globeadeer above. These are really classic nostalgic models for me, and just looking at them takes me straight back to the mid 90s. I love the old rules for them too. They're incredibly dangerous, but it's pretty much in the hands of fate if they devastate the enemy or just explode and shower your horde of chittering rat-men with napalmy death!

I also have Grey Seer Thanquol (below), who I'm using as an ordinary Warlock in this force. It's a really old model, but I think the sculpt is still nice. I did a little bit of a glow effect around his eyes which I think came out really well. It's something I don't do very often, but I wanted to make him look a little bit magical. I've also been reading the old Gotrek and Felix books that feature him quite heavily, so it's fun to be able to use the model. I just wish I had an old metal Boneripper to go with him!

The plague monks are probably my least favorite kit in this force. They show their age a lot worse than the metals. I did a lot of filling work on them to get them to a stage that I was happy with. As with a lot of the force, I didn't want to spend too long on them, but I did stop to sculpt some hoods and to fill in around their necks and I think it was worth the time and energy. The banner is freehand. I tried to keep it simple enough as I'm not great at freehand designs. I'm pretty happy with how the horned rat symbol came out. 

The unit below is 25 Clanrats in a massive block. I wanted to get a good quality finish quickly, so for the whole army, I airbrushed a yellow colour over the whole of every model. I hadn't used contrast paints before, but I basically used the yellow as a nice bright undercoat that I could pick out the main colours over. They're quite detailed models, but by batching them in pretty big chunks of 10 or 15, I made it to the end of the force in good time. Their fur is Gore Grunta Fur Contrast and the blacks are Black Templar. I did do highlights on each part, but it cut down on the middle stages. It was also nice to work with the contrast paints because they're so fluid that they were easy to apply. Whenever I build an army, I have to decide it it's going to be more for play, or more as an art project. These guys are definitely designed for play and are a speed and quality that matches! 

Last, we have Warlord Spineshank! He's the metal Spinetail model, but has a few conversions on him - including his back banner and actually a robot eye that's on the other side of his head so you can't see it in this photo. He was a model I bought a while back and converted for my 40k Skaven before I had any idea where I was going with them. At the time, I didn't have a clear direction and when I picked up the army and worked on it properly a few years later there wasn't really a place for him anymore, so he's been languishing in a drawer ever since. Handily, he is perfect for this force, so I got him on a square base and set him loose on the Old World!

 And that's about it. It certainly was a productive month - I painted a Dragon, a Stegadon, and 40 Skaven. The best part is that I'm really happy with how everything came out! I have planned to increase the army to 1000, and It's quite achievable. It's pretty much just adding a Doomwheel, 10 Stormvermin, an a few more Plague Monks. 

Sisters of Battle - Squad Complete (new plastic models)

I finished my first squad of new battle sisters. These come from the army box set, and use a matching scheme with my Everchosen entry from a few months ago.

They're really nice models. I have to admit, that I was beginning to think that we would never see the mythical plastic sisters in this lifetime, but here they are! They were easy enough to build, but I painted them as a batch, and with a scheme this complex, it was a bit ambitious. It was just too many layers of paint coupled with a massive amount of detail that made it a bit of a slog to the finish in the end. I started painting them in December and made it about 3/4 of the way through, then ran out of steam and had to do some different projects for a bit to build up strength for the final push!

I'm happy with they came out, but a bit daunted to tackle the rest of the box. That said, Squaduary is coming up again soon and I have those small units of Repentia and Flagellants to work on, so that might help push through a little more of the force.

The paint scheme itself is started with an airbrushed coat of purple that is highlighted in purple and white before being given a coat of Vallejo Transparent Red. After I've set the basic blend on the armour up, it's all brush work till the end. I enjoy painting the yellow parts, but the robes are a bit of a pain. They just become very monotonous to paint given their size and the number of clean layers required. Overall, they're a nice looking squad, and a great start to the army. I also repainted my older converted Exorcist to match the scheme, so I'll do a post about that soon.

Ready to face the forces of Chaos?

Dark Eldar Wracks (Drukhari) Painted

After my latest Steel Legion push, I knew it was time to shift gears to something less batch-tastic, and a bit more artistic. While searching through the cupboard of doom and having a bit of a clearout, I came across my half-finished Dark Eldar project and thought it was high time to get some of them done. Long-term readers may remember the "week of evil" a few years ago where I started them, but somewhere in the mists of time and the first ever Squaduary, progress halted; only to be resumed in the last week or so.

I said when I first started working on the Wracks that they were probably one of the best plastic kits ever made. A few years haven't changed my opinions there - the details are really crisp and they're a kit that basically has no bad parts and plenty of spares too. I enjoyed finishing the last 3 from the unit too, as I got to actually paint to a higher standard than I do for most armies, which feels both fulfilling and somewhat annoying all at once. It's nice to get something you're really proud of, but at the same time, I get frustrated by how long they take!

The funny thing is that I've almost painted them too well, as I can't actually capture the colours and effects on them very well with my camera. The red is actually highly reflective and there's a lot more depth to the skin tones, but the crappy phone camera can't really keep up.

I've been working on more Dark Eldar units too, but I haven't been able to take pictures of the other unit I've finished yet. Still, at some point the blog will be updated. I've pledged to work on a Talos for Dreadtober too.

Steel Legion Command Squads

More Steel Legion again. This time, I'm presenting my two command squads. Together with the sniper squad I showed last week, these guys make up the elite section of the force (well other than the Scions and probably veterans at some point!). The picture above shows the army commander Kastoph Greede (some longer term blog-viewers might remember him from my battle report a year or so ago). At that point, I hadn't finished his squad, but here they are with him:

They're really a classic set up - a banner, vox, medic and one special weapons guy with a grenade launcher. They're pretty stock, but the medic does use a few Anvil Industry bits.

I quite like the red cross on the medic and the little freehand numbers etc.

I did say command squads, and that's because I made a second one for my other commander. This time a full flamer team - sort of as a counter-assault unit, but also just for fun. In time, they'll have their own Centaur to ride around in, but for the moment, they'll have to lump it on foot.

Converted Steel Legion Tech-Priest Enginseer

This Tech-Priest was a bits box built freebie. I wanted him to look a little bit ramshackle and less-preferred by the Mechanicus. The kind of guy who would run some type of tank junkheap and get annexed to an armoured column aas he was the best of what was left!

I've always got plenty of stuff about the place from years of building and collecting. The biggest part of this guy is a Renegade Tank Commander body from Forgeworld. I've had the part for a while, but had never done anything with it. It actually only goes to the knees, and had no arms, so I built on top of it as a base.

I used a plastic pair of legs from a different tank commander to get him on his feet. After that, A pair of Scion arms and a Heresy resin power axe with a brass rod haft brought the look together.

His backpack was cut off of a Kreig vox caster (who I had converted to have a cloak in my sniper unit, so I was cutting it off anyway) - the robot arm is an upside-down Necron arm with a bit of a Dark Eldar Scissorhand attached. Yep, he's made of bits from pretty much everything! Oh, and his crotch-plate is part of an Onager Dunecrawler.

Anyway, he's ready for battle now, and painted up to match the rest of the force. Fixing vehicles is pretty good in this edition of the game and as a cheap choice, I'm sure I'll get plenty of use out of him.

Steel Legion Stormtroopers - Militarum Tempestus Scions

Another Steel Legion post today - just showing my recently completed unit of Stormtroopers. You kind of have to call them Stormtroopers for Steel Legion as they pre-date all of that Militarum Tempestus stuff, and that's how they're referred to in the books too.

I enjoyed painting these guys a lot too as they're a little bit different from my usual infantry models. They really came alive when I did the blue details too - like all the pipes and stuff. I tried to make the screens on their wrists look like some kind of bio-readout monitor thing, so I did a heart-beat shaped thing on each one. Equally though, it could be some kind of vox signal (or maybe Codec like in Metal Gear?)

At some point, I'll have to get another 5 so I can have a full unit. For the moment, there's no rush as they're not in any of my planned lists, and I've got so many other units to finish that I can't justify buying anything new. My Steel Legion have become a bit of a dumping ground for older guard army projects - these guys were originally earmarked for my now defunct Traitor Guard force, so they were basically free as I had them laying about the place anyway. The upside and downside is that I have tons of tanks to paint up too!

More Steel Legion tomorrow....

Steel Legion Sniper Squad

I've been hard at work again on a plethora of new units for my Steel Legion army - in fact, it got to the point where I had units just lining up to be photographed for the blog, so I though I'd better get started.

This sniper team is a command squad consisting of 4 guys with sniper rifles, although with a slight adjustment, they could be a special weapons squad. They were quite a simple conversion too - just Kreig bodies with Anvil Industry arms, cloaks and guns added. The guy laying down firing his rifle was a lot more complicated though, as I had to convert a standing body, and reposition his arms around a plastic scout sniper rifle. Unlike the others, his cloak is entirely greenstuff as his pose was too far from what the resin ones were designed for. In fact, his pose was so wild that I replaced most of his right arm with a piece of wire and re-sculped over it to make things fit. It worked in the end though - and I love it when a plan comes together! (I might have been watching the A-Team lately too...)

Painting-wise, this is just my standard Steel Legion scheme. I batched these guys with 13 other models, so it was a bit of a busy one, but I made it to the end. The only thing that was a bit out of the ordinary for me was the camo cloaks. I sort of based the design on some of the recent marines from Shadowspear, and I'm quite happy with how the patterning came out. Camo is always one of those things that I'm a bit hesitant to do as it can look terrible if painted sloppily (which is generally my preferred style!). Getting these right did take a bit of time, but it was worth it as it's quite key to making them stand out.

With any luck, there'll be plenty more Steel Legion posts on the way, as I have a lot of units. It might even be tomorrow if I can get things written up!

A view of the cloaks

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...

Tyranid Termagants - Gooey Organic Colour Scheme

For the Overmind!... oh wait, wrong franchise...

Just for a fun little side project, I painted up a few Termagants recently. I actually got them for free from my brother, so I can't complain, but they were a bit of a sorry band of rejects when I first clapped eyes on them. Especially two of them that I stripped; having had ugly old paint jobs given to them some years earlier by some unknown eBayer.

For the scheme, I wanted to get a decent amount of colour in there, and make it relatively fast to paint. I used the airbrush to lay down some flesh-tones and then worked over that. I also used a decent amount of both Blood for the Blood God and Gloss Varnish on them to get a nice sticky wet look, which I like on my alien bugs from beyond the stars.

Probably the most interesting thing was building their biomass looking bases. I like to think they're inside the bowels of a hive ship or something. As this was a cheap project, I wasn't going to buy anything fancy, so I sculpted the bases myself using milliput. The style does vary across the unit a bit as it took me a while to find my footing. Basically, after a bit of experimentation, I found that creating a wave like texture a bit like a ploughed field worked well, and then pushing the rounded end of a paintbrush into the divots to create ribs made quite a nice looking base.

This was just a little side project, so at the moment, I'm not planning a full army or anything. I would like to try the scheme out on a larger monster, but maybe a bit later, I guess we'll see.