Look - lead!

"Oh," I hear you say. "You're back, are you? I know we hadn't agreed anything, but it seemed fair to expect the next turn in the ongoing saga of The Bridge Over the River Chai oh, you know - sometime soon after the last one was published? A week seems reasonable?"

"And now you tell me you still don't have it? You've got a lot of nerve showing up here, let me tell you!"

Yes, I suppose you're right. Nearly a month has passed since the last report on those crazy orcs and dwarves. It may gall you to know that the contestants are now busy on their eighth turn, but I have yet to even start writing up turn five.

Lets explain: its all to do with New Years resolutions, you see. Having spent the year week after Christmas firmly ensconced in the bosom of my family, I wasn't able to do much by way of hobby work. I was only able to return to the business of modelling work on or about the time of the New Year - a time rife with idiotic promises of life improvements. I decided to pledge to myself that I would not assemble/strip/prepare another figure until I had finished painting everything that was 'hanging around' on the desk.

Now, you may recall at some junction that I was planning to proceed into some sort of Chaos army, possibly based on Nurgle. That wasn't going to happen with my desk in the state it was at the end of 2012. I would have liked to show you a picture, but so taken with my cause was I that I didn't even hesitate  to get to work. So you'll just have to believe me.

The next part of the story is this: I now I have a nine month old living in the house. That's not a surprise - I've was here when she arrived, but far from becoming less demanding, it appears that little girls require more and more time as they get on (and, according to my experience of women, the increment is exponential...).

I mention this because it means I only have a small window of hobby opportunity available. As far as I am concerned (and you, no doubt), the business of hobby work - the actual stripping, gluing and painting parts - are different to the writing about the stripping, gluing and painting parts. I lost that argument - as far as my wife is concerned, its just hobby time - if I choose to spend it writing about the hobby as opposed to just doing the hobby, well - that's my own stupid fault.

So, in order to satisfy me new years resolution, I was required - nay - forced - to paint, leading to Turn five just falling by the wayside.

See - not so judgemental now, are we? I'm the victim here!

Anyway, rest assured, I'll get on with Turn 5 (and the rest) from this week onwards.

Still, I ended up painting some stuff.  A ghost (spectre/wraith/ethereal of your choice), a skull chucker, a corpse cart, a chaos dwarf bazuka and thirty two goblins. Also, I repaired Onowitz Mann'fluh - cos I broke him.

A brief note on the goblins. You've come across the terms strategic and tactical. You are reading a blog about wargames, so of course you have. In information technology, these terms are used slightly differently. Strategic describes the right thing - the correct approach, the gold standard. Most of my modelling work is strategic. Tactical describes quick and dirty - its not great - it just gets you over the hump, as it were. The thirty two goblins were tactical. I had purchased a bunch of goblins a long time ago. They were painted, but not especially well, as I thought. I stripped the metals, but the plastics I had just left. They just happened to be on the desk (due to reorganising). When I looked at them, it occurred to me that if I just gave them a black wash and rebased them - well, they would do. So that's what I did. I'm not especially proud of it, but as you'll see, this move has launched my meagre forces into 'army' status.

Now, there are pictures. And some more explanation.

Right, so on to the payload. Today started like this:

Given that going to work would have resulted in instant death (you know - health and safety and all that), I stayed home.

Much better.

With this sudden injection of time, I decided to take all of my painted stuff, put it on a table and take pictures. For you. Apparently, pictures are worth thousands of words. Here are thirty two thousand words worth of pictures:

It feels appropriate at this junction to highlight that I had no access to special lighting, which accounts for the fact that the flash managed to darken (romanticise?) most of the pictures.

Sorry.

Now I ended up in this situation where I had all these figures on the table. Having looked at them, it occurred to me that I might be able to split them all into two different forces - opposing forces.

Risking the wrath of The Minister of the Interior, quickly laid out a potential battle - between the Undead and the Goblins (with friends!):

So that's what I've been busy with.

Friends?

Oh? What now? You saw some modern figures? Okay, okay - you got me. There are some current edition things in there. Specifically, the goblin bolt thrower? Yes, and the crew? Sure, okay.

As I said:

Tactical.

A Damn Good Idea!

You know how you end up hating people because they're cooler than you? No? Just me, then?

Man...I hate you, Private Wierd.

Looking forward to the next one...

This month's figure...

I'm a new dad, so painting is hard.

But, it appears that the stars have aligned appropriately, as Venus ascends through Basingstoke*. Or something. The point is that time, paint, an unpainted figure and myself all appeared to find ourselves in the same place and the same time.

We decided to hang out.

This is the result:

Another chaos dwarf. This plus this and this means that I now have a unit of 10 (painted).

And, off the back of the advice I received on the 'Warhammer for Parents' topic linked above, I also experimented with inks. Or washes. Or whatever they're called. So this is a goblin, painted just in basic colours, and washed in GW brown (I forget what its called, its the new one) and then highlighted with the same base colours as before. The point of this exercise was speed. I won't lie, I'm not thrilled with the outcome, but it is better than I thought it was going to be. And, it only took about 40 minutes (not elapsed time, mind, but total) to do. So...something to think about.

This is a hobgoblin that I decided to try GW black (I forget what its called - its the new one) with. Again, base, wash and highlight with base. I think it turned out better than the brown.

Again, the point was speed - nothing else. This is a comparison with one of my Groms, which was painted without washes:

For interest, the chaos dwarf was painted using my regular layering approach, in order to maintain consistency with the rest of the unit. Assuming my other experiments go well (the two goblins above were a huge fight against my OCD first and foremost - the bases are not done because I genuinely thought they would be in Nitromors by the end of the day!), I think I could really get these washes to work.

*I don't know, but I have it on good authority that a gentleman's club may be found there, from which an especially suitable view of Venus may be appreciated. Venus appears on Fridays and Saturdays.

Warhammer for Parents

Right.

Three weeks down - only seventeen years, eleven months and one week to go. Ostensibly, parenthood is for life, but I need a light at the end of the tunnel, so lets just go with eighteen years, shall we?

From what I can see, the only clear difference between mankind and any member of the animal kingdom - let's say, for example, a jackal, appears to be four hours of sleep. I know this, because having missed out on opportunities to claim my four hours of sleep, I can confirm that all rational thought evaporates, and one operates purely on instinct.

I just caught myself about to throw an empty biscuit packet down the toilet. It made sense at the time.

The thing is, I think I'm getting the hang of this now. Parenting and painting, that is. Here is evidence:

That's right - a painted figure - one that I've painted since the BOJ* came along. It took ages, and has really challenged the way I currently paint, because I suspect it unsustainable.

*Bundle Of Joy

And, if you have a solid memory, you might say - hang on, you've already painted one of those, how do I know its not that one?

Well remembered. Here are the two of them together:

As you can see, the other was damaged and has been repaired to have a giant machete sort of thing, and has different coloured armour.

With this extra chaos dwarf, that means I now have nine painted - one more and I'll hit another milestone!

But lets go back to that unsustainable painting method for a moment. The problem I have is that I cheerfully sit there layering away, never using any inks, or washes, or shades, or whatever the kids call them these days - except for my trusty brown ink, of course.

I must now raise the challenge - if I am to continue with this sort of hobby - perhaps not so much playing, but just the simple joy of painting - I must get more efficient. I recently saw a post of some chap mentioning how his target is to get a figure painted in an hour. It sounds like an excellent idea, but I am too OCD and panicky to even experiment with my lovely old lead. Yes, I know, I can strip them, etc, etc. OCD is my enemy here, because I'm struggling to break out of my old behaviour, and I somehow suspect my figures will hate my for trying. I can't have angry figures now, can I?

Still, I forced myself. I was in town somewhere, and I popped into a leading gaming outlet, where I picked up the following:

As you can see, the seals have not yet been broken. To be honest, I don't even know if I've bought the right thing. I don't know what I'm doing, and I don't know what to do next. I've even wondered how weak I was that I fell for the pimply faced marine's painting advice with these things. The figures I have are older than him, so what does he know, come to think about it?

So, perhaps the thing is to throw the question out to the wider forum:

What is a quick way to paint figures? Could I get a good looking figure in an hour? Is such a thing possible? Are inks part of the solution?

As a complete aside, I am now aware that Citadel have changed all of their paints. Whilst I've tended to avoid the balance of GW's stuff, because it is no longer from the 80's, I've used the paints because I know the colours and to be honest, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. But now they've gone and changed everything on me, so I guess that final tie no longer applies.

So, a second question to the community - what's a good alternative? I believe that the paints that GW used to use in the 80's/early 90's are still in production by another company?

Oh, it's a girl, by the way. 8.5 lbs, or 3.7 kgs in new money. Daddy's She's still getting a nerf gun, though.

Realms of Chaos: Er...mish-mash?

Sometimes, when left lone for long enough, I commit my mind to feats of brilliance. We've had no progress in the Battle of Koles Lorr (and alas, no update tonight), so this afternoon, I found myself left alone for long enough. I pondered over the cure for cancer, refining my experiments in this area. I thought about the piracy issue in Somalia and of the solution to that land's difficulty. I drafted up a potential plan for the Euro and what the chaps over in Brussels ought to be doing to get out of the sticky mess Europe finds itself in. I offered some marriage advice to some people.

All in all, pretty humdrum stuff.

But then undiluted brilliance hit me with its full force: I have some painted goblins!

Let me explain: before, when I used to play Warhammer 6, I made use of a goblin army. No orcs, just goblins. These hordes were all crafted from the awful plastics produced for the 6th ed. release. In the end, I sold that army, to return to the one true way, which turns out to be several kilograms heavier.

But, I kept some of the more special figures. Special to me, that is. They were hardly remarkable on the field, let me tell you (apart from Manny - more on him later).

So, moving on, I realised that if I added those remaining few goblins to my collection of Groms, I could  scrape a unit of 10!

Following that train of thought, I realised that I could then use these little fella's as chaos goblins - either as an ally contingent, or just as some followers of a Chaos Champion from Realms of Chaos.

By now, my tiny mind was in overdrive. Unable to draw the brilliance to a halt, I then conceived an even further element of inspiration: What if Grom (the chariot based one) could be used as a Chaos Champion? There are many chaos gifts that can render a champion immobile, resulting in that champion needing to use a cart or a chariot.

Being far too generous to keep this idea to myself, I immediately set about taking a picture of what that could look like:

Anything can become a Realms of Chaos Warband...

But still, brilliance was bursting from every pore and bouncing off the walls. What if I allied my Undead with that Chaos Warband?

So I took a picture of that little scenario:

Realms of Chaos Warband and Friends

And then focussed on specific areas, because that picture was awful:

The Left Flank

The Right Flank

The goblins that caused it all. Essentially, three Groms, a Skarsnik from the 90's and assorted war machine crews. I had to rebase the non-Groms, but such a small effort enables so much! Of course, once I've painted up my 80's goblins, these ones will be decommissioned, with the exception of Skarsnik (4th ed's close enough, and besides, there's Grom too!), Manny and Weazil. More on those famous personalities below.

What other dominant chaos attribute could it be but Enormously Fat?

You would have seen these dwarves before. Unfortunately, I had a modelling accident, in that I held the matt varnish spray can too close to the two chaps on the left, resulting in their faded out looks. I'm not really sure of applying any gloss will help, or if I need to fix them with paint touch-ups (advice welcome) but I will need to do something to restore them to their cheery selves...

Chaos Dwarves

Grim Reapers and the Necromancer

Skeleton Warriors (of the Nightmare Legion)

An Enormously Fat Chaos Champion called ... Grom

Manny and Weazil. You're unlikely to know them, but these are the very definitions of Special Characters as GW would have you believe. Together, they formed the core leadership of the afore mentioned Goblin army. Manny was the general of the force, but was only a hero level character (35 points - he totalled 39 with his shield and his chainmail) - not a lord. Greatest of all his accolades (and there are many) was his defeat of a blood thirster in a challenge. With no magic weapons. Granted, the blood thirster didn't flee, so Manny had to spend another round with it, which turned out for the worst, but imagine the look on the guys face when he realised that his blood thirster had just taken a wound from a goblin, for none received. Priceless, as those clever chaps from Mastercard say. Manny was named from two sources:

1: The leader of the orc army in the 3rd edition scenario 'Forenronds Last Stand' is an orc called Mandraks the Murderer. The name has stuck with me forever, so it seemed right that a more diminutive version of the Mandraks name lead the goblins.

2: Making a second reference to Flintloque - the goblins in that world are positioned as being the occupants of Portugal - that is, the Portuguese. At the time, I knew enough Manny's to go with the stereotypical Portuguese name and stamp my goblin leader with it.

Manny and Weazil

Weazil was the army banner bearer. He was modelled to have the something-or-other red rowdy banner, which gave +1 leadership to everyone. You may note that my online moniker on most forums has been taken from this brave little goblin, who has controlled the discipline of thousands of goblins across all sorts of theatres with his calm, collected presence and the vigourous waving of his banner.

From the back...

Weazil is an unmodified figure from the current edition metal goblin chariot.

Manny is actually a grot from 40k. I picked the figure because I loved the fact that he was shouting. Of course, his main job as a general was to shout at the whole army, but this figure was especially chosen, because Manny's main body guard came in the shape of three very large and very stupid stone trolls (sadly, no longer with us...). Suffice to say, those trolls required an awful lot of Manny's vocal guidance. Imagine, if you will, Manny's exasperated voice as he directs the trolls in the actual direction he wanted them to go...

Here he is with an original, unmodified grot:

Manny now and Manny then...

So what we have here is a ... well, mish mash of stuff. It's lots of painted figures all stuck together and crowbarred into a Realms of Chaos force of some sort. Because I could...

Anyway, hopefully there will be more on the business of Koles Lorr soon, but thanks for stopping by!