A Tale of Four Oldhammer Gamers: December

Published just time time to make my fellow gamer (Warlord Paul's) blog post out of date, points wise at least, I have returned to the business of A Tale of Four Oldhammer Gamers after a long absence. Sadly, we have had quite a bit to deal with family and work wise and hobby time has been seriously reduced. My mojo has also been seriously drained by the bleak winter light, but inspired by the glorious output of many a Oldhammerer I have picked up the brush once again and set to work. 

The chaos warrior you see before you is the second model in my new Nurgle army, after the Palanquin of Nurgle I completed last time. If truth be told, I began work on this model in late October, and started work a proper in November. It has taken me just under two months to finish it. No wonder I am languishing at the bottom of our league table!

As with the palanquin model, I used the randomly generated charts in the Lost and the Damned to create the background to this model. There is a handy champion chart on p.209 and I rolled a d1000 to determine what my second character would have in terms of attributes. The dice came in with a lowly 44, so I hastily flicked through the book to find out what fate had in store.

Well, my second character would be a human and have Blood Substitution (maggots) and Agility as their attributes, along with chaos armour. You can field an infinite number of champions as part of your army, each costing 100 points at a base rate, so reaching the target each month shouldn't be too difficult, as if I am in a fix I can just roll off and create a new champion. The trouble is, some of them can turn out to be pretty weak and feeble, a bit like my leader, so there is always a risk. 

The model was pretty straightforwards to paint, if time consuming. As you might have guessed, I have painted A LOT of chaos armour of a variety of hues in my time, so finishing this was no real struggle. I used Foundry's bright green as a base before mixing in a little yellow and bleached bone to achieve the highlights. The shading was added using the same base colour I created with the addition of plenty of black and green ink. 

I quite like using red alongside green, so chose a fairly dark shade to pick out the gloves. I opted for a cheeky blue spot colour too, on the fiendishly faced codpiece! Gold, again Foundry, was used to pick out a few details here and there and silver drubrushing brought out the detail on the chainmail and sword. I used a series of glazes to cut back the brightness of the silver paint and make the figure look a little more dirty. 

The Lost and the Damned has some great ideas for iconography and I wanted to do something a little different on his shield. I chose the plague chalice design and painted it up on a yellow background (chosen to contrast with the green) but used a very similar green for the cup - to help tie the shield back in with the rest of the model. 

If you look at the chaos warrior model, you might notice that it has several maggots or worms wriggling from within. I painted these up using a nice pink created by mixing a dark red with pure white. I repeated the maggot idea on the shield - again to tie the two together. 

Having now completed two character models I am going to opt for a proper unit for January. As I love the old plastic GW skeletons, I am going to do a unit of them. In the Nurgle list, they are known as plague skeletons - and will need an undead hero or chaos champion to lead them. If I plan to paint 14 models - this will take me up to 140 points for the skellies plus whatever the leader of the unit will cost. Of course, If I upgrade the unit further I can probably reach 200 points, which would make up for the month of November that I missed. 

Right, I am off to finish a couple of other painting projects. 

Happy New Year!

Orlygg

Tackling the 'Unfinishables': The Miniature Painter's Struggle

Years ago, I wrote about the concept of a Miniature Moriarty. Those miniatures that somehow or other turn against their owners in a kind of Frankensteinesque moment that often results in a long period of apathy. At the time I jumbled together some ideas to help me express how certain models made me feel. It went a little like this:

"So if you blessed by not having a shameful secret (or think you are) how can you recognise a Miniature Moriarty? To help you decide I have created a little checklist that you can run through if you are unsure.

Here we go...

1) No matter how hard you try your paint always 'does its own thing' and blobs and runs in places you don't want it to go.

2) The colour scheme always looks awful, not matter what you try. Either too flat and lacking depth or cartoony.

3) Base looks awful, even though you have used the very same technique that you always use.

4) You start to despise the figure you are working on.

5) This feeling of dislike spreads to other models and you become reluctant to paint anything else in case the 'contagion' spreads to other models.

6) The 'contagion' spreads, you become disinterested in painting, your miniatures stand idle and the jar full of models you just bought from eBay float in their dettol bath unloved for weeks. Your table becomes a dumping ground for random objects placed their by your wife, dust breeds, the table becomes an embarrassment that you just cannot face tidying up

7) You blame it all on that one miniature that started the whole downward spiral.

And now, the most important aspect of a Moriarty Miniature! Number 8 in the list. Remember, that we are talking about a nemesis here, an archenemy. Its a personal thing, between you and the lead.

So...

8)Only YOU can see the faults. Only YOU care about the flaws. So only YOU can make the change... Everyone else will just look at the model and say... "I like the way to did the...'

So...

Just paint."

Thankfully, none of the models I am sharing with you today are true Moriarty. They are what I like to call the 'Unfinishables'. Models that you want to paint, start working on but ultimately abandon for some reason (initially for a short time). However, they just remain on your painting table, or even worse tucked safely away somewhere (often for years) and never, ever get completed. Years can go by, as indeed did for a couple of the models I am showing off today, without any further work being carried out. 

With a long holiday underway, I was keen to get some serious painting done and hope to get a least one miniature painted each day. Currently, its Day 6 and six models stand completed before me (though today, Thursday, I haven't completed anything as of yet) so I have done well. What better to get working on than some of those unfinished projects I have started over the years and never got around to finishing off. As I write, I still have three unfinished projects for next time I have a clear through but I am ready to move on to another project really. 

So lets have a look at what I have managed to paint over the last few days

This undead rider model is a bit special. Not because there is some sort of Warhammery legend attached to it but due to the fact it is one of the few original models I owned back in the 1980s. I must have at some point picked up a blister with these in as there was once a second rider and steed, but both were far to badly damaged survive one of my culls and went in the bin. Yet, this model has survived and I have been keen to paint it over the years but as described, I'd start it, grow unhappy or bored with where I was going and plop the figure in the Dettol. Repeating the process several times. 

He was undercoated and based on my painting table but I wasn't sure where to go with the colour scheme. I have a hefty collection of old school undead and always intended to do a white (bone) back and brown scheme for the lot of them, using red as a spot colour. The colours of death ultimately. So I opted to go for a brown robe for the rider, he did after all look like some kind of monk, and highlighted up with my new best friend of painting, Foundry Boneyard 9A. A truly versatile colour indeed. 

The rider's face and hands were completed using the Boneyard shade I just mentioned, followed up with a chestnut ink glaze. The cleaver was very easy. Just a dark metal basecoat, washed over with first a brown ink and then a orange/brown wash. A slight silver highlight was added to the edges. The shoes proved a bit of a problem as I didn't want to just paint them another shade of brown. In the end, I went for a green into which I mixed a little of the brown to create a little colour harmony.

It was the horse that took the time. I wanted to go for black to contrast against the brown of the robe. Now, as many a painter will tell you, black, like white, can be a real challenge to get right so I highlighted up with dark greys until it reached a point I was happy with. I used the same grey to drybrush up the mane and tail. It was fairly simple to basecoat the missing chunks on the mount's body with a scarlet before washing over with a chestnut ink. I highlighted the gore with red and then a pink. 

An enjoyable figure to paint and a finish I am really pleased with. 

McDeath is a favourite range of mine, though few of the models are exclusive to it. The Knight of Harkness above is one such figure. Sadly, he has gathered dust for some months on the paint station because there was always something a bit more exciting to work on. He was very straight forwards to paint up, though I had to change the base colour of his 'skirt' bit to red after reading through the background materials. I was unhappy with how the armour had originally turned out, so I mixed up a blue glaze and ran it over all of the steel on the model. It gave the metal a bright, noble hue that helped bring out the details. Well, I thought so anyway.

Only the shield took me any great time. The design is lifted from the McDeath background material though the colour choices are mine. A real test of my freehand. 

Over the years I have raved about the Citadel plastic skeletons many times and I am sure you will forgive me if I rave once again. They are, quite simply, the best plastic skeletons ever produced and GW really did go backwards with their second (and much inferior) set of plastic skellies. Thankfully, the originals are very easy to get hold of and I probably own more than I will ever need. If indeed you can actually own too many of them in the first place! 

I cannot recall why this model was abandoned. But he has sat there for some time feeling lonely so after the paint had dried on the Knight of Harkness I started work. I was keen to try out the Foundry Boneyard triad on a whole model and ended up washing over my original paint work with a dark brown wash. Once dry, I used a mixture of layering and drybrushing to work up the model to the highlight. This probably took no longer than 15 minutes to achieve. The axe needed just a moment or two to highlight with suitable colours. Easy and effective I thought. Another positive advert for triads. 

Of course, being a plastic skeleton he needed a freehand painted shield. As I have done in the past, I Googled skull designs and copied one onto the shield. To add interest, I decided to add a single, blood-shot eye inside one of the sockets. If you are trying similar things, always do your research first. Have an explore through as much reference as you can and always keep you paint fluid with plenty of water. My top tips!

With the skeleton based and finished, it was time to move on to a figure that I started last spring. Originally part of my Chaos army but unfinished due to me having grown tired of painting Khorne stuff - this classic chaos dwarf is a brilliant example of the insane ideas behind the original chaos release. 

He painted up quickly. I loved working on the face and chose purple as a skin tone. Dwarf faces are so full of character that they are a joy to highlight and I just kept on adding Boneyard 6C to the mix until I was happy with the result. The red hair was also easy to achieve. A dark red base, highlighted with orange and yellow. I used the same yellow to pick out the two spots on his face. To add further contrast, I used bone for the horns sprouting from his head and a vibrant green for his tongue. 

Not a chap to bump into on St Valentine's Day, eh? 

Though hard to see in the image - I used browns and creams for his clothing. After all, with such a shocking colourful face, I didn't want to over-egg the pudding and spoil the look of the model. The boots were black, drybrushed with grey and highlighted with a lighter shade. I used Foundry's steel triad for the blade and GW's new gold paints for the hilt and guard. 

The model gave me another chance to paint on one of the 'ogre faces' I have been using on my chaos stuff. It was a little more challenging this time, as I usually use the larger round shields, but instead opted for one of the spiky undead ones. As I have done previously, I kept the rim of the shield black to help frame the painting on the face itself. Its what they did in the GW Studio back in the day so its good enough for me! 

It was then an easy job to base the model. In retrospect, this is my favourite model in this little project. I have already added him to my chaos dwarf unit. 

Now this 'unfinishable' must be my oldest. I started this back in 2012 when Realm of Chaos 80s was just a few months old. I gave up on it because I just didn't get on with the sculpt. I am still not a great fan of this particular orc, but I persisted and am fairly happy with the result. I still think that my recipe for orc flesh is too pale - but there you go... That is a problem for a future painting session. 

And finally, this chap. He was a quick paint and is destined to bulk up a unit of Slanneshi Chaos warriors in my other chaos army. I cannot say I am a big fan of this model either, but he is finished and I am now free to try other things. I don't feel that the colour scheme works particularly well. I think its the lack of depth in the pink armour. But its finished and ready for the table top. 

To conclude, there is something deeply satisfying in completing a model at the best of times. Its even more satisfying when they are annoying figures that have just sat there gathering dust for some time. As I said at the head of this article, I have a few other models out there which can be classed as 'unfinishables' and one day, perhaps half-term, I shall return to them and endeavour to get them completed too. 

Until then, I off to start work on my next project. More McDeath stuff if you want to know. But before I pop off, why not get thinking (like so many of you did with my speed painting challenge) about YOUR 'unfinishables'. And the next time you lift a brush to paint, why no reach for one of those models instead, and lay an overdue project to rest.

Happy painting.

Orlygg

Acceptable in the '80s: Marauder Chaos Warriors, Champion on Griffon, Cockatrice and Reiksgard

The next release to document in this history of Warhammer Third edition are presented here for your viewing pleasure. A bit of a mash up this time, with the release schedule moving away from army deals and towards smaller (relatively) miniatures. The MM91 Chaos Warriors are probably the most well known today, and represent the mere handful of chaos warriors that Marauder put out (there were later some mounted versions) and can be found very easily on eBay. They follow on and use many of the motifs we have seen in earlier Citadel chaos warriors over the lifespan of this blog series. Horns, twisted helm-faces, scale-mail, chainmail and so on. 

Looking at the models left to right, the first is rather squat and has obviously rolled 'John Wayne's legs' on the chaos attributes table, or otherwise was sculpted with sitting on a horse in mind. The second model looks rather triumphant, wielding a rather unlikely mace high above his head and all he needs are a collection of severed heads on his base to give him that special psychopath look. The final model is by far my favourite, and plays less on the generic themes of a chaos warrior. This model whiffs positively of the 1980s classic film, 'Labyrinth, and looking at him now I kind of wish there was a David Bowie inspired 'Goblin-King' model (attired with a suitably eye-brow raising high-trousers/codpiece set up) to lurk rather mystically in the background. Probably to twirl his steel balls!

A great, great sculpt. I don't know if anyone else has noticed, but similar to many of the other 'mini-me' miniatures that you get with Marauder, this model has his own doppleganger in the guise of the crewman of the Chaos Dwarf Swivel gun. Perhaps it was his little brother?

Its not mine, no...

The Reiksgard are not as interesting, and I can honestly say I have never noticed them on eBay - not that I was looking, but considering what I know about the amount of models GW were selling at this point there must be many thousands of them out there. Perhaps its the painting. Perhaps it the photography, but I struggle to like them here. Perhaps I should track one done and paint it to see if my judgments are fair?

The MM43 Chaos Champion on War Griffon suffers from a bit of 'static leg syndrome' with the way its claw juts out like the riding beast is a trained gundog and is dutifully indicting its master's quarry. The rest of the body looks okay, but perhaps this month's photography suffered from gremlins and the models came out looking a little worse for wear. I will reserve judgement on this model until I see a better example of it. I am sure you dutiful readers will have your own opinions on him. 

The cockatrice looks like a decent model but suffers from a rather garish paintjob. I cannot recall if Citadel did a cockatrice of their own to compare it with but I expect that I shall be chasing down this model when my Warhammer Bestiary painting challenge reaches the point of monsters.  

Some nice line drawings accompany the models, and we have another glance at the rather bland Marauder minotaurs. I thought I would include it here for completeness sake. 

Orlygg

A Warhammer Besitary: Chaotic (and Evil) Warriors and Sorcerers... ohh and a couple of new beastmen of Slaanesh!

Regular readers will know that my output is often sporadic, but has seen a slight increase in recent days. Well, this is due to it being half-term this week, and me being a teacher, I can spare an extra few moments to write up articles for fellow old school Citadel enthusiasts. 

With an increase in spare time, painting will swiftly follow, surely? Well not so for me, not in the first part of this week anyway. I had hit one of those ruts that all painters find themselves stuck in from time to time. I just couldn't find the motivation to pick up the paints and get the chaos warrior that has sat on my desk for two weeks completed. 

Thankfully, I got over my painter's block on Tuesday and have managed to get quite a few miniatures finished off for my Warhammer Bestiary project. If you are coming to this post fresh and wonder what I mean by this, its simple! I am attempting to paint a single model for every entry in the WFB3 Bestiary using old school Citadel lead only. 

The first miniatures to share, in order of the Bestiary, are the Chaotic humans. Here we have a couple of mid '80s Realm of Chaos models. I am not sure who sculpted the warrior, but the sorcerer is one of Jes Goodwin's classic Chaos Sorcerer range.

Starting with the warrior, I chose to paint him up in traditional (for RoC, anyway) Slaaneshi colours as my embryonic Pleasure God old school army needs all the help it can get. As you may know, pastel shades are the order of the day here and the best way to produce those is by adding pure white to any base colour. I didn't really want to go all out on the pink front, so restrained the colour to the breastplate and went for a blue colour scheme for the rest of the armour. I added horn and gold here and there to act as spot colours and used black to suggest a dark leather boot on on of the model's feet. The weapon was just a Bleached Bone job with rust effects created on the blade using old Citadel inks. This model was really a paint by numbers exercise as I have painted quite a few chaos warriors in my time and this one took no real effort.

The sorcerer was a different matter. Here I didn't want to go down the road of any particular god but was inspired instead by the crazy multicoloured chaos schemes of the mid 1980s, with particular reference to the original Chaos Sorcerer advert which can be seen here. I noticed that the sorcerer's head was covered by some kind of facemask and a jester's hood. The colour red immediately sprung to mind here and I decided to offset this tone with white, using grey to create the depth. For the rest of the model, I just painted a bit here one colour and another with another. I played around with the colours until I was happy with the way they had been spaced out. I used red to line the edge of the robes to build some continuity with the jester's hood. I feel that the result works really well, don't you?

On reflection, I found that the purple of the sleeves was too starkly highlighted and felt that they needed bringing down a little. Instead of just repainting them I opted to experiment with a heavy glaze of the base colour (Imperial Purple) first. After this glaze had dried the purple had a far more subtle and warm look so I left the model as it was and concentrated on the base. This type of technique is certainly something I would like to experiment with in the future and something I recommend you try out when you are highlighting cloth. 

The shield on the chaos warrior was another one of my by the book jobs, though I chose green to match with the shoulder pad. I have written several articles on how to paint faces like this and instruction can be found here. The only thing I did differently was to paint the eyes red and dot them with yellow while the paint was still wet. Once dry, I added a line to act as a pupil and used a tiny white spot to create the look of reflecting light. I was not entirely satisfied with the result so I will have another go with it on a future shield. 

As regular readers will know, I have been working on my textile painting technique as it had been a shortcoming of mine throughout this project. I was pleased to discover that the Warhammer Third Edition Bestiary includes a section on EVIL warriors and sorcerers, so I would have a chance to paint a more conservative robe here. Yes, that is EVIL. Demonologists, necromancers and so forth, though I didn't want to walk the brightly coloured route of the model above, nor did I want to tread the street of the 'uber-black' necromancer type either. As a compromise, I opted to paint the model as a hedgewizard and suggested that he was evil by using purple paint and ink washes on his skin. This was a method I used on the evil warrior too. 

The evil sorcerer is my personal favourite painted model in this series so far. I feel like I got the face, hair and clothing right here and it really is rather surprising to compare the quality of the result with miniatures I produced last year. A project as varied as this certainly helps improve your skill and I heartily recommend such an endeavour to anyone. 

For the evil warrior, I choose a old Paladin model that I had lying around in a draw. I wanted something unconnect to chaos, for this model would represent an evil man, rather than one who had sold his soul to the Ruinous Powers. I quite liked the idea that he was a fallen knight too. I went quite John Blanche on the hat and boots, using natural tones based on cheetah fur before using white and black dots to give the impression of markings. I struggled with the silver plate armour though, and the gold is rather lack lustre too. So I have found myself a new target for future work, painting gold and silver across large flat spaces on a model. Thankfully, I am now armed with advice from the Greatest, Fraser Gray, and I plan to base with yellow when I paint gold in the future. 

I chose purple as a spot colour for the gloves and scarf on the warrior. Purple is a royal colour but it tends to have a whiff of deceit about it too, well for me anyway. The shield was a touch up on an old Paper Tiger design from back in the late '70s and you can find a tutorial about how to achieve such a shield here. I added a gold shield rim to help tie the shield in with the rest of the model and washed over the entire design with a chestnut ink glaze. This aged the 'look' of the shield and gave the model and aura of experience I think.

In addition to the four models shown above, I also painted up a couple of new beastmen for the very slowly developing Slaaneshi army I am building. The blue fleshed model was painted first in about thirty minutes and employed very few colours. The flesh (and fur) was just a light blue basecoat worked up through highlights in stages of additional white. The horn was Bleached Bone drybrushed with white. The belt was a simple leather brown with a Bleached Bone highlight. For the chainmail, it was silver mixed with black base with a silver highlight while the club was created with a little red being added to the belt basecolour, and again highlighted up by adding Bleached Bone. Upon reflection, I am quite pleased with the result considering how little time I actually spent on it. It is easily the quickest paintjob I have produced since by 'base and wash' days, circa 1988. 

The second beastman took me longer, about two hours. The fur was drybrushed up using the same mix as I used for the first beastman's belt, only I added the final highlights with brush before using pink and brown ink to build up an impression of the boar like mouth and nose. Pure white was used to highlight the teeth. Drybrushing with a final highlight via brush was used to complete the weapon too. With the edges of the axe blade having a pure silver line added to it. I feel these kind of touches make a blade look suitably sharp. 

The gold scale mail was completed using my usual method. Using Imperial Purple (again!) I quickly highlighted up the leather bands that hang from the beastman's girdle and used gold dots to pick out the studs on the end. I used exactly the same pink mix (red with white paint, 50:50) to work up the girdle itself, adding a touch of white each time to draw out the detail. Another nice result here with this beastman, with some nice rich colours and took little effort to complete. 

And so here I will leave you. Half-term draws to a close and I feel like I have got over my slump. Next, I need to turn my attentions to the tropical forests of Lustria as I tackle '80s Lizardmen. Right, I better get basecoating!

Orlygg.