zaterdag 31 maart 2012

"Dum-Dum? You better run-run, for Atilla the Hun-Hun"...

... said the Easter island statue in Night at the museum.
There's truth in this, they were a fearsome bunch after all but let's go back in time for a moment.
In januari last year a few people at our club decided to go play Warmaster ancients in 6mm: cheap, easy to paint, few storage issues,.... perfect.
We've got 2 Roman armies, Gallics, Carthagians, Indians and... my Huns.
Just why I picked them I don't know but it must have something to do with it being an all cavalery army, it's not armour heavy and it's shooting is not better than those of others but it's fast, damn fast and can lure enemy units away into various traps and bottlenecks thanks to their 'Skirmishers' rule.
Generally they tend to piss people off big time, hence I love them.
And so, with a 1000 points worth of horseriding devils under my command, I fielded them once against my friends Romans in a test game... they limped home with only a handful of soldiers left and surrounded by a lot of smirking Huns, I simply love them.
Last Crisis Baccus miniatures had by chance only one 1000 point armydeal of Huns and they quickly found their way into my posession, no surprises there.
Today, after nearly 5 months, I finally found the time to assemble and base them (actually the basing was done after the pic got taken).
I had to put them a bit closer together, otherwise they would'nt fit on the picture.. all 1995 points of them



I'm already planning on augmenting the army to 3000 points and this time Atilla himself will lead to keep the allied, and otherwise unrelialable, cavalery in check with bellowed orders and fearsome treaths.
Did I allready mentioned that I love them?

maandag 26 maart 2012

HOTT Stronghold

Hey all,

To start with I've got good news, great news and bad news.
let's start with the good one first: at the start of this month I talked about my health issues and last week I had the final test in the hospital, it turns out that my calcification is slowly but surely receding and that I don't have a herniation so surgery is defenetly out :-)))
Bad news is it can take up a year before said calcification's completely gone and that I'm diagnosed with osteoarthritis in my neck, none of wich can be really cured.
The great news, however, is that I've finished my Hordes of the Things Stronghold.
Normally this should be mounted on a 6 by 12 inch base maximum... I just grabbed myself an old cd wich roughly covers the same surface and started from there, I simply prefer round stuff over rectangular ones.
Randomly broken and snapped off HD foam was 'kebabed' over a wooden saté-skewer for strength and glued to the base with some foam offcuts for extra support.
A rim was build out of putty and adorned with snapped toothpicks to wich bits of balsawood were glued to get that lovely Orcy touch.
More toothpicks were used in the gate and the base for the canopies, bits of kitchentissue soaked in a water/woodglue mix were draped over these.
The same W/W-mix was used to coat all the foam prior to spraypainting and after this coating was dry undiluted glue was aplied to the ground, the earthen rim and to the flat surfaces of the 'rocks' and treated with sand.
A basecoat of black was sprayed over the entire model, I mainly used earty, natural tones on the rocks, woods and sand and bright red on the canopies.
I had some fun to design and then freehand Orc-writing on the canvas.
Enjoy.





I've also taken my first steps in painting 15mm models and boy it's weird, it's something I have to get used to and even tho I still prefer the 6 and 28mm stuff I'm gradually warming up to the 'inbetween'.

See you all next time.

vrijdag 16 maart 2012

Double whammy

More deamons were added to my ever expanding army.
After the main force of Nurgle and the herald of Slaanesh, Khorne's Flesh Hounds and Tzeentch's Flamers entered the fray.
Let's start with the Flamers first.
These guys provide me with some much needed magical firepower, D6 S4 shot's a piece at 18" is not something you take lightly.
For once I've allowed myself to be tempted to buy them new in Finecast...... never again.
I've seen better detail on a spat out piece of chewing gum... at last young Padawan, at the end you understand why they nicknamed it... Failcast...
Don't get me wrong, the models themselves are great and all credit to their original sculptor but moulds made for metal don't seem to be made for moulding plastic-resin...
I'll happily field them, I've tested them last monday in a small 500 pts battle and since then my friend suffers from severe Flamerphobia.
I've got a bid on 6 more of them on e-bay cheapish but after that my Finecast adventure ends.


I did my best on them, I honestly did but the detail on some of the smaller places is so shallow it hardly shows on the picture after I've painted them.
3 basecolours were chosen: yellow, purple and turquoise.
These were used on different parts of the models to give them a riot of colours and yet to tie them together as a unit.
Such is the mutating power of Tzeentch that the moss on the base is a pinkish orange and the sand turned to gold, Fool's gold no doubt.. as in parting a fool with his gold when buying Finecast...

The Flesh Hounds were a different story alltogether, they came in at a fair price from Heresy miniatures, took some fiddeling to assemble and were a bliss to paint.
I had them for some time and only now found use for them, it also gave me the good excuse to get some of Black Cat's skullbases.
I've got no idea how they'll behave on the battlefield, this I will find out this evening so fingers crossed.






I think the red skin turned out alright and they contrast nicely with the sombre bases.
I've always excperience red as a hard colour to paint, espescially on a black undercoat, but ever since I've discovered to used fine layers this difficulty has vanished like the morning mist.
Their poses are very dynamic, the heads are separate so you can assemble them to some degree of variety.
I've got some more of them to paint and, contrairy to the Flamers, I will add some more to the unit.

Till next time..

woensdag 14 maart 2012

WHAAAAAG-POKKALIPZ!!!

Hey all,

Just a quick WIP of a 15mm Orc stronghold I'm making for HOTT.
That's right folks, this guy's  planning on a small force of 'Da Green Mennaz'.
I'm not going to use any GW Orc-glyphs or any of their look on Orcs on this thing but I'm not going to make rocketscientists of them either.
This camp will still look like it's clobbered together with whatever they couldn't eat, burn or wipe their arses with, build around a 'Holy Rock' and with huge canvas canopies hung overhead at various hights.
The pictures were taken the oldfashioned way: I didn't use my studio for this, it's just to give you lot an idea.





Colours will be kept fairly simple: grey for the rocks, browns for the fortifications and ground.
The canopies will in all probabillity painted in brighter colours, possibly in native North-American style.

zaterdag 10 maart 2012

A regiment a month part 11: For pain and pleasure

Ok, I'm early with this post but as I told you last time I have a good reason for it and I do hope I'm wrong, I hate surgery.
It gives me hearth tho that I'm going to finish my 12 months of ARAM after all with a small bit of cheating: next month's entry will be painted this week and posted in april, it feels a bit like going back in time and change history.... now where did I leave my sonic?
Anyway, enough of the future rambling and back to this thing.
I've fielded my Nurgle army a few times now with moderate succes and you know what? The whole mono-god thingy stinks!!!
It can take some punishment and dish out a world of hurt back but it takes them some time due to a low initiative value, last game I've played I was, thanks to a spell mind, battling zombies who were quicker than my Plaguebearers!!!!
So in comes my next master: Slaanesh.
This army will be the complete opposite of the Nurgle one in every way.
Nice clean colours, spring bases with flowers and green grass, attractive female deamons, a sweet fragrance (imaginary) and... mainly GW miniatures, I just can't find cheap and suitable proxies for the Deamonettes and Seekers.
My Herald here's from Games Workshop and I was lucky enough to find her in a dusty shop somewhere in Antwerp, I rather avoid the place but it has some 'wargaming antique' including this one.
It's an old Deamonette unit champion but she's a nice hero in my opinion so I simply had to have her.


 


After undercoating the whole model black I painted all the skin light grey and drybrushed it to pure white.
The claws and horns were slighty builded up with a mix of black and turqouise, adding the latter for the raised areas and later a mix of turqouise and light grey for the final highlights.
The armour and buckle were painted in gold, starting with brass and a finals highlight of mithril silver.
The loincloth was a bit more special, first I mixed pink with metallic medium and lightly drybrushed it with mithril silver so it apears to be some sort of deamonic piece of fabric.
I hope you like her, I sure as hell did.. this model was painted again with gusto :-))))

dinsdag 6 maart 2012

Tha..tha...th..that's all folks.... for now

Hey all,
I'm afraid this'll be my only post on this blog for this month and if the doctor's correct, not THE Doctor mind you because The Doctor's always correct, for quite some time.
Let me give you a little background: Some of you may know that I work as a scaffolder, wich isn't the easiest of jobs but a man's got to feed his familly and buy miniatures for himself to paint.
I've done physical labour all my life and so I tought I could hack this one too, unfortunatly my years seem to cacht up with me.
In december last year I was diagnosed with a cacification on the right shouldermuscle (supraspinatus for the friends) and the little shit has proven to be tenacious, 2 shockwave therapies just couldn't seem to remove the little bastard so for that alone I might face surgery, I'll know for sure next friday.
This monday I went back to the MP here for a lingering tingling sentation in my right hand, he sat there unmoved while I explained what was wrong and didn't say a word untill I was finished: a possible spinal disc herniation in the neck area.....
This aint the end, those who've know me for some time now know that I've met far worse, stared it down and walked out of it so this'll be no exeption but for goodness sake: just all I wanted was to paint for a full year non-stop and reach ARAM part 12 where I left off....
So see you all soon-ish.