WIP The Altar of Slaanesh

Well, this is something I did in some form ages ago for my Chaos Dwarfs, a sort of "relic" that will continually be adding stuff should I win games with my 3rd Legion, the Emperor's Children.

Back then, it was a slave unit with models of all sorts in it... now I`m going for an evergrowing pile of stuff.

The idea is very simple.  The base will be an old compact disc, which I`ll be painting the same style as my 40k bases, the white and jade marble looking stuff.  In the center is a pillar of worship, with a statuette on top, dedicated to the Prince of Pleasure, Slaanesh.

Scattered over the floor around the pillar will be relics of the opponents I fought, being heads, weapons, arms, banners, whatever or icons glued to the pillar itself... in as much as possible their colour scheme they used during said battle (or artist impression in case of unpainted *booh hiss* opponents).  Every time I win a battle, I`ll be adding a piece of gear to the monument as such.

The chained poles on the metal pieces I`ve added are for "very special" achievement trophies, like should I ever rejoin the tournament scene and actually win something, the opponent of the finale will be honored on of those various poles.

Every once in a while, I`ll be showing off the "loot" again as it gets added, but the altar itself will be updated and posted on the Battle Stats slot of this blog once it is "ready to go".

I hope over the years this will keep growing as such to an impressive stack of painted bits, that will tell the tale of victory from the Emperor's finest legion to have ever existed as such.

WiP The Corruption of Cherno Alpha

A small kitbash I`m doing, as I still had the old Cherno Alpha toy lying around.

And now, it will be corrupted into a Decimator due to adding spikey stuff...

The first thing I did though, was glueing together all the joints of the model, in order to prevent it from spontanious break dancing when it's on the table, while an old cd serves as base.

I kept one of it's claws and added a flamer underneath, while a butcher cannon was scratchbuild onto the other arm to complete it's weapon loadout.

Surely, it's a lot bigger then the FW model, nearly as high but not as wide as a Knight, but nevertheless I kind of like the way it turned out.  Next part in not the near future will be to airbrush the undercoat and the pink onto it though, and then it can become truly corrupted with it's paintjob.

Or so I hope at least...

Sonic Dreadnought kitbash

The FAQ for the Forge World book brought them back, the good old Sonic Dreadnought, and better then before.

While the original model, now impossible to find, was the old "boxy" model, I went to build one with some parts I had lying around.

The base of the model is the Helbrute that came in the Start to Collect box for the Chaos Space Marines.  As per the rules, the melta is replaced then with two blastmasters.  This is a very important change in that it are two blastmasters, so you can fire with them at two different targets, compared to the old twinlinked one that would allow you to target only a single one.  He also comes with a Doom Siren, and I left the power scourge on him as that is a might potent weapon.  This brute can lumber over the battlefield, playing rock music, then use his wailing siren before charging in.

For the blastmaster, I used T'au missile pods to give them a different and boxy look, with the ends of Chaos turrets added.

The Doom Siren is a contraption of lights and exhausts, to represent those old "discoe boxes" we had in our childhood, the ones with the silver netting in front of their speakers.

At 165 points, this is a nice machine, though geared more towards close combat which isn`t really "my thing" but which I`ll have to do when facing one of those Imperial Guard or T'au armies the club has sneaking around...

Now onwards to the next unit to paint... though I doubt that will get ready during july.

Cultist Conversions

One of the next units I`m painting up for the Emperor's Children is going to be a Cultist regiment of 20 strong.

Coming from the Cultist Assault boxed set, this means you just have 20 basic meatshields, I mean, Cultists, so some creativity is needed.

While I`m going to paint them as my old Necromunda Cawdor gang (the game is coming back woop woop), with blue overclothes and deep red pants, I`m also sniffling around to find the old metal Heavy Stubber for the unit when it reaches 20. 

The deal with the Cultists is that for every 10 models, you can take a flamer or a stubber, so to start the unit with it's first 10 models, I`m wanting to include a flamer as "stand and shoot" probably won`t be the playstyle I`ll be using for them, more "take bullets and deliver the Marines". 

To that end, I converted one of the basic handweapon and pistol guys by removing his weapons and adding one of the Chaos Marines sprue flamers instead.

For the champion, his hand weapon (a ball and chain) was removed from a regular cultist, and replaced with a big mean sword, as he will be carrying that basic combination anyways. 

Nothing fancy as such, but it are the first minor conversions I did since returning from retirement :-)

Limited Edition Bilbo and some BrickForge

I finally found him.  The Limited Edition exclusive Bilbo baggins minifigure, that came with the Stateside DVD set of An Unexpected Gathering, the first The Hobbit movie.

One of the last remaining pieces that I missed in my collection of Lego Middle Earth, though the counter will be going up by one during this year as it seems part 3 comes with a Bain exclusive figure.  The middle movie had the Legolas figure that was available in polybag, so that wasn`t hard to track down in Europe.

This version of Bilbo, still mint in it`s insert packaging (well, he was when he arrived, the packaging is already gone hehe), comes with a lighter blue coat then the one included in the latest set Desolation of Smaug, and is hanging open right down the waistline.  This shows off a yellow undercoat and a blue white pattern scarf.

Sweet little figure that will find his way into one of my display builds over time.

I also received my very first BrickForge order ever yesterday.  I`m not against third party parts at all, the more variation, the better.  I learned about them when I got my boxes of STUDS trading cards last year, and those card packages included inserts with a custom piece to them.

When I recently read on The Brick Blogger (see my sidebar of followed blogs for the address) aout a 30 under 30 cents sale, I went in for a look.

That action lists their end of line items at a very cheap price, and so I ordered a few items around there, mostly one or two copies of some items, but also 10 potion flasks and 5 black pigs, great for adding details to medieval life. 

I also received without problem their `gift of the month`, a blister of pieces that you get freely when you order for a certain, low amount (15 USD I believe it was).  Of course, I had to mail them right after making my order, as I hadn`t read you had to add the bonus pack manually to your cart, in blind `habit` I thought it would be added automatically like promo polybags are on the main Lego site.

But it wasn`t a problem and when the enveloppe arrived yesterday, the nice gemstones pack was right there in it.  Top notch, and I can say for certain I will be back with them as the pieces are excellent looking and good quality plastic. 

Artisan`s Contest XIII

Okay, as expected I ended shared 5th on 6 entries, with 1 vote (thanks to the anonymous voter!)

My personal vote went to this entry, which ended third:

I wasn`t to happy with my own entry, as the roll used as a pillar would have been painted black marble with green lines, but time restraints had me going for grey and it basically wans`t what I liked to turn out.  On the other hand, I was happy with how the asterix lass turned out, and the `smoke melt effect` of the lava imbued items.

In the end, the model is going to serve as the stronghold for my 15mm force once completed, so the 15mm Godzilla included by Khurasan should be in scale more or less hehehe

Anyways, here some more WiP pictures:

Deathroller 2000 entry: Hashut's Chariot

So, the guys over at Merry Mayhem News blog are holding a scratchbuild a Deathroller contest.  Deathroller is a game spin-off from Blood Bowl, in which Dwarven Deathrollers and similar devices try to complete either 2 laps around the pitch OR be the last roller errmm... rolling.

So I decided to enter, and build one of the rollers for my Chaos Dwarfs, aptly named `Hashut's Chariot'.

The model is compromised of the following parts:

* The plastic core of a silk tape roll, it helps if your so unhandy your cutting your fingers often
* 2 dial bases of Heroclix models
* 2 metal old style fighter bases of Agents of Gaming Babylon 5 Fleet Action
* a balsa stick of a Magnum ice cream
* the top of an electric cable protective shell
* Exhaust of a Battleship Yamato (the scifi japanese anime) model kit
* a missile pod from a 1/144 Gundam HeavyArms Custom model kit
* the head of an old Chaos Steed
* small piece of jewelry chain
* a converted and resculpted plastic Chaos Dwarf warrior
* one of the females of the Dark Eldar slave barge
* a `roadkill` rabbit

Undercoating the model makes it look a hotch potch better and more unified

For the paintjob I went with the colour scheme of my army and Blood Bowl team, and I am now considering three uses for the model:

1. if Deathroller 2000 gets played at TSA, obviously this will be my `car`
2. with some house rules as a Chaos Dwarf secret weapon in Blood Bowl
3. as my Demon Engine in games of Mordheim, as the Iron Demon from Forge World is to big a model to move in most streets and between buildings.

Now only let`s see what the other entries will be comprimised off, and may the best roller win!


For those wanting to enter the contest, there is still time until the 21st of october, details can be found here

And to now more about Deathroller Race 2000, follow this link.

Scratchbuilt contests

Two posts in a day?  Yups, because this is something I might point you people to and you could join in!

Okay, nice, some more chance to liquidate some parts out of my bitz boxes, as there is first of all a new Artisan Contest on the way, this time you have to build a scenery piece or the like would be found `on the way to Zharr Naggrund`.

Details are here at the front page of Chaos Dwarf Online

Now I`m not entirely sure what I`m going to do, but I got some Asterix models lying around, and I spotted a small godzilla somewhere in one of the boxes... those will be the basis me thinks.

Second there is the Deathroller 2000 scratchbuild competition over at Merry Mayhem News to build a deathroller that can participate in a sort of, well, deathroller race.

This might give me the chance to get some heroclix bases gone from all the repaints, but off course, being a TRUE Dwarf the driver will be a Dwai Zharr and not one of those misguided underground slobbers...

Now, off to the all thumbs scratchbuilder that I am, with the olympic thought in mind...

Hobgoblin Backstabber conversion

Sneaky Gits must be about my most favorite unit of the Chaos Dwarf army alongside the Earthshaker and the Blunderbuss warriors, especcially in the 'old days' with their limitless lapping round and poisonous attacks special rules.

The trick was to make sure they didn`t break on the first round (hello nearby general) and then you could throw in a literally bucket of attack dice who with luck could circumvent the S/ T roll, making those pulcky little snitches even a threat to high armoured elite troops (okay, cavalry with their 1+ / 2+ save might have been pushing your luck, but elite infantry like Chaos Warriors certainly where toast), scrapping their rank bonus as an additional, well, bonus...

Currently working on a block of these blokes again, I decided to do a simple conversion to represent their unit champion, called a `Backstabber` in the Hobgoblins army book, and based upon a simple hobgob warrior.

The weapon was swapped with a huge plastic knife from the Marauder set I believe (dunno, been around in the bitz box for years) and a cut short chaos warrior cloak (the one with the fur interior)

With some `camouflage painting` this guy should soon be ready to lead the sneaky devils on the field of battle, even though the LoA list makes them `just` two hand weapon hobgoblin warriors (booh hiss) but they can still be themselves in either Ravening Hordes or the fan-made Hobgoblin book (hoozaah).

Hobgoblin Steam-powered Bolt Thrower mk II

What better way to celebrate the return to Zharr Nagrund by sacrificing some of your wargame models to the Father of Darkness, Hashut.

For centuries, the Hobgoblins are the most loyal of the servants of the Dawi Zharr. They are not even trusted by the other greenskins that toil in the furnaces in slavery, and take to the battlefield alongside the ranks of armoured Chaos Dwarves.

However, their main machine of war, the simple yet efficient Bolt Thrower, lacks punch at times, and as such the most elite guncrews are sometimes rewarded by the engineers with this upgraded version. Hurling explosive rocket-bolts by a build up of steam pressure, these weapons have a longer range and higher damage capability then their normal counterparts.



The model is a rather simple kitbash, but for the sake of making a sacrifice, I cannibilized on purpose some of my models in the collection from other game systems. The carriage is that of a Union 6pdr gun for 28mm American Civil War gaming. The top section is an Aeronef from Brigade models, turned upside down and pointing the tail outwards. Only the rockets are actually from my bits box, namely two Imperial Guard missiles from the missile launcher sprue.



It will be crewed by the regular hobgoblin crew though I`m going to change the bolt in ones hand by altering it with greenstuff to look as another rocket. Rules-wise, it`ll stay a normal bolt thrower for ease of play.
And the mk II? That is in honour of the really old Hobgoblin missile launcher from about 25 odd years ago...

Lead Painter`s League season 5: The Aftermath

And so another year and another Lead Painter`s League over at the Lead Adventure Forum (LAF for short) has ended.

This was the second year I participated, and a set of objectives was laid out before the start, upping the bar a tat from last years performance:

1. Try to score the maximum of 150 bonus points. I could have gotten that already last year, but i wanted to run a previously seen League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
2. Try to end in the first half of the Leaderboard. Last year saw 52 participants, but this year it turned out an amazing 72 `players` had entered, so I would need to score enough to end in the first 36... oh boy!
3. Try to win 3 rounds. Last year I managed to pull out 3 wins and a draw when aiming for just a win as it was my frist entry back then
4. Try to score 350 points, being 50 more then last years objective and calculated on getting all bonus points, losing all rounds and scoring a 100 votes average.

So of we went to battle it out... I`m linking the entries to the actual round for the score and all, but as last year I will refrain on commenting wether or not I think the result was correct or not. The fate of each entry lay in the hands of the 300+ voters on average each week.


Round 1: Celtic Ireland



Round 1 was a bonus round where 10 extra points where had if one entered with `civilians`, aka unarmed bystanders. I decided to start the League with an Irish themed entry, just like I did last year and which I have decided to try and do so every year, unless of course there is no way to manoeuvre into this with the bonus theme.

Round 2: Blink!



A derby against clubmate and Creepy Corridor Andy. He had my ass all first part of the week, then went to draw until saturday evening. Then I jumped just over and clear of him to net a first win this year. Andy still thinks I paid people to register and vote on that final moment. I let him think...

Round 3: Orbital Defence Force



Third round, second win as I entered my `obliged` space ship entry. A mixture of Tau from bith Games Workshop and Forge World, and I must say I hated painting them. Out they went afterwards to a better home.

Round 4: For Gnomeragan!



I play World of Warcraft, I admit. I wanted to try and see what prepaints could do, and so the superb race of gnomes was drafted into the League.

Round 5: Hold The Line



Another bonus round, earning you 10 points extra if the theme was Africa, and another 10 if you also painted opponents. I went for 15mm British Sudan troops holding position against Fuzzy Wuzzy tribal warriors, but whatever I tried I couldn`t get the whole bunch decently in focus. Never the less, I was still on course for objective numero uno.

Round 6: Sons of the Sand



A heap of Black Tree Saracen assassins and a sand Golem from Leviathan, I came out against Martin from the Fire Broadside! blog. I was happy with how the golem turned out, but the assassins look like they escaped from some second rate disco movie.

Round 7: 15mm VSF Irish on Mars



An experiment for the VSF rules I have lying around, a couple of ACW Iron Brigade models by 15mm.co.uk got a nice emerald jacket, accompanied by a blending of a Flames of War bogward and a horrorclix evil Leprechaun. I had a background for these blokes as well, but since that `glossed` to much, I went to picture it without them.

Round 8: Just Communication!



I love anime. I love Gundams. So I decided to enter them into the League, painting up the originals from Gundam Wing and using the theme song as a reference. They couldn`t net a win, but it was one of the rounds I enjoyed most painting. Next year, I`m going to go for a lot more of j-pop culture entries!

Round 9: Apha Flight



The one round I had high exceptions for, and it started with a huge typo in the entry mail *DOH*. Luckily, the frist attempt of using a more `Dallimore style` for painting paid off big time, earning me my biggest win EVER in the League so far. Those Candaians certainly did me proud, I don`t blame Canada!

Round 10: The Coming of Muad`hib



The grand finale and a lot of bonus point to be traditionally scored! If you got a movie scene, you got 10 points, opponents netted another 10 and using a large model or scenery totalled the possible bonus points to no less then 30.
I went out to search for a rather obscure entry, to not have the x`th variation on the same movie all over, and settled on the assault of Paul Atreides on the Harkonen in the Imperial palace. Using Peter Pig 15mm PLO for the desert warriors and `modern africans` for the Harkonens, I grabbed a Huge Purple Worm` prepaint from the DnD range to make a sandworm.
I do have serious questions on people`s mental state actually liking the background painting though... at my club Patrick, from the Nelson`s Revenge blog, actually thought it was `Van Gogh-ish` :-s


And so the League ended, so what about the objectives?

I ended up with full bonus points (objective 1 reached) and 435 points (objective 4 reached) after 4 wins and 6 defeats (objective 3 reached) on a 41st place (failing objective 2).

Not a bad result for myself personally, the level this year was really really high and I`m glad I once more managed to ride it out to the end.

For next year? Scoring a 5 / 5 in wins seems like a pretty good goal to aim at...

Ciao ciao and congratulations again to all participants!

Converting the little people

No, this isn`t a post about bringing leprechauns over to some obscure faith, but about filling some gaps miniature wise in Future Wars Commander.

As earlier posts have already told, our game group is running a major campaign in 6mm, and some of the armies I have lack entries left or right in the miniature ranges, and so it came down to my poor converting skills to knock something together for use in my battles.

The first up where the artillery and aircraft support for my Micro World Games lizard rider army. Reptiloid species riding dinosaurs, even though the army list is having a hard time winning games due to lack of survivability and very expensive infantry causing them to have low breakpoints, an image to great to resist.

So first up, the artillery and FAO officer. The officer was pretty simple, a normal infantry man and some scanner looking periscope device. The device was a lever from I don`t know which kind of 15mm cannon from Flames of War anymore. The artillery was a 10mm Pachysaurus I got from Magister Militum.
His back got a little bt filed down and the turret with panzerfaust missile from a german Pak36 (again, 15mm german leftovers from Flames of War) put on top of that.



Next up, an aircraft with FAC officer. Again, the officer was a simple base `work out` to show him easily on the battlefield. In this case, it was an infantry man mounted on top of a column. The column is the top of a Doctor Who Mirco-universe spinner, so now the bloke can overlook the battlefield and direct the airstrikes.
The plane itself was again a 10mm Magister dinosaur, this time the Quatzalcoatl (the dinosaur of that name, not the mythical mayan bird). He was then equipped with wingbombs, which I got from FoW Stuka divebombers, and a cockpit which was once a backpack of some himalayan gear looking chinese fella.



And the guys together with some regular `saurs to show the scale and size.



The second project to fill out was a Cronus walker to use in the EuroFed list from Brigade. For this, I used a Serpent Gundam of Marimeia`s army in Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz from the Bandai 1/300 gundam models series. These models come in at around 6 - 7cms, so he is towering enough to warrant a 700 points monstrosity.
I removed his Vernier backpack rocketboosters, as well as his typical anime `big cannon of doom` weapon. The latter was replaced by a 28mm machine gun of I have no idea where that ever came from, and to simulate the traditional `beam sabers` often used in the various Gundam series, I added a 40mm scimitar from a Mega Miniatures genie range, and painted that a bright pink. Ideal for the 12dice assault version of a Cronus walker.
Couldn`t resist though in order to show his `heritage` to christen the walker `Marimeia` ;)

Medieval Village

A small village `cd terrain` sized, made with greenstuff, plasticard and some small 6mm resin buildings by Gauthey Miniatures, for use with warmaster or Seeds of War