City Slickers

For some time this thing has been brewing and since last friday the volcano called 'Mordheim' has erupted.
Mordheim, as some might know and shame on those who don't, is a skirmished based 28mm miniature game set in the Warhammer world revovling around the ruined city of Mordheim.
Some call this thing 'Necromunda for fantasy' and since I've never played Necromunda I'll agree with that, but I do know for fact that it's the most fun game ever by Games Workshop.
The aim of the game is that you assemble a warband of suitable cutthoaths and venture out into the city to find loot, obviously you're not the only one with this idea and so you'll soon come to blows with your rivals.
Your warriors can gain wealth and experience by fighting and surviving but they can also suffer wounds that have an effect on their characteristics wich I think is brilliant.
A fair few warbands were created by GW and a lot more stuff is fanbased and whilst I support the fans I followed my instincts and opted for a gang of Possessed, in short Chaos Cultists.
One thing I must tell you is that I'm currently unemployed so the whole thing is done on a budget but this doesn't mean it was gonna be pug-ugly.
Years ago the Powers of Chaos granted me a nice set of miniatures from Heresy and these came in handy as a Magister, Brethren and a Dark Soul, the beastman is a Sebeki miniature from Crocodile Games.
The Possessed is a whole different story... I picked him up at the bring and buy at Crisis last year for scratch and kitbashed him with plastic bits from GW and a nice amount of green stuff.
So now I have a 6 man warband of Chaos lovers called the 'Cult of the Black Pit' for ziltch.. who said wargaming's expencive?

And here they are partily painted

It's impotant to think about the future and prepare yourself, I only got 2 heroes so at first my Wyrdstone income will be low so as soon as I can afford him Brother Maddox will join the gang.

The body is from Hersey, the head from a Warlord Games Celt, the tentacle from Black Cat and the sword from I don't know.

Enjoy it Mortals!!!

A call to rusty arms

More Gremlins have enterd the fray in painted condition, the whole So'mer Teeth Jones boxed set is now finished.
If I can manage to paint up the stuffed piglets, taxidermist and pigapult before thursday I can go to The Outpost with my head held high!!!
The 4 Bayou Gremlins were painted with a more limited colourscheme, mainly brown, grey and blue.
This was then applied in different configurations to create a rag-tag look and yet give them a uniform feel.
The same unhealthy green skintone was used, again to tie them visualy to So'mer and to make it look like a whole.
The rusty guns are there too just as the marsh bases.

The rider on the warpig was given the same treatment as the rest of the gang whilst the hog itself got a pure pink basecoat wich got gradually highlighted to a more mundaine skintone in order to create a rozy healthy looking beast.
The spots on its hide were first painted on in a grey basecoat and given a grey/elf flesh highlight

And to finish, here's a group pic with So'mer taking the leader's place of honour in the back.

All in all I'm happy with them, they're fairly easily to assemble and they're straightforward to paint.
What they lack in scultped details they make more than up in comical value and to be honest I don't like painting lot's of chains and gems and other little gewgaws anyway so that' fine by me.

I must say that in real life they look better and for once this isn't due to a dying camera but thanks to a brand new one wich I'm not yet used to yet.

See you next time all.

In the So'mer time

Last week I got an invite to come to a Malifeaux demo at the Outpost in Antwerp for next thursday, the 12th that is.
And believe it or not but I happened to have some minis for that game lying around: the Bayou Gremlins.
They're about the only faction in the game that I liked at that moment (little did I know those Japanese ghosts were on the way) and still like to be honest (who needs Japanese ghosts anyway) due to their extremely high redneck-hillbilly style.
Some time later the So'mer Teeth Jones boxed set and a few extra pigs were delivered on my doorstep.
And now, after some considerable time, I finally managed to paint up the big guy: So'mer himself.

I gave him dirty clothes, a rusty gun, an unhealthy green skintone and a red, white and blue top hat (he's American after all) wich has seen better and certainly cleaner days.
The planks are remains of a wooden walkway wich you often find in marshy areas and it's a theme featured troughout the whole... army...
All in all he's a fun little guy to paint, not overly detailed but with nice little touches like the medals on his hat and the cigar.

I hope you like him.

It's.... therapy

As I said before I've entered a sculpting competition hosted by Hasslefree miniatures
We were given this armature to start with

Originally I wanted to do a Dryad in the midst of transforming from tree to human form, some soft erotic stuff and I even made scetches of it.
Friday she was shoved into my mailbox and I must say that she's rather tiny and fine, no offence tho, and so the whole hippie tree chick thing went out of the window.
After pondering for a few hours I came up with an idea, it was gonna be a rather ambitious multipart project wich fitted my 'sculptingskills' just perfectly.
I didn't want to sculpt hair nor clothes, I wanted to do a fantasy thing and I wanted animal aspects in it: Centaur.... not, half horse/human stuf has been done, done, done again, done some more, done enough to piss me off and done far to many times.
So I went for a Spidertaur, or Censpider or whatever you wanna call an eight-legged invertebrate with a human torso on it.
Since the starting mini is female I besed her on the infamous Black Widow spider, I didn't want her on a fat and hairy body but more on a sleek and nasty looking one so there's the advantage of keeping her head bald alltough a small carapace looking protrution might be added.
This is what I got so far and I must say it looks pretty well.

I've got only one major problem with this whole project and that's the fact that I'm arachnophobic, so much even that on a regular basis I dash around the house shivvering and emitting sounds of utter disgust much to my son's ammusement, he asked me why I'm making a spider even though I fear them.
My reaction however tells me one thing: I'm right on track and after a shot of wodka or 3 I was ready to start working on the legs.
So yeah, it's kind of therapy.
And speaking of legs, I still got the legs of the armature lying around, I'm thinking on using them for some Arab babe in burka or nikab after this is done, just for laughs and to calm my overly stretched nerves due to sculpting an eight legged freak...

And.... CUT!!!

Well, this is it.
I'm taking a break of sorts, no more painting against the clock untill further notice.
So yes, I'm quitting the ARAM for now.
Why?
First of all I felt I was struggling to get any decent project done, I kept postponing things.
Second is that I'm in all probabillity going back to school as of september and this will ask for a lot of my time and attention since my future depends on it.
So with the summerholliday coming and with it a month of gaming at GW and 2 weeks of titty staring on a French beach I'm stopping my monthly regiment stress, I feel like I deserved the needed rest.
I'm not going full stop on the whole modelling and painting stuff, oh no, I've entered a sculpting contest ( I can't sculpt for shit to be honest) and I'm keen on having a 500 points Space Marine army done (yes, the Zulus) but I'll just contribute less over the coming months, that's all.

So see you all later, a bit less but not never again!!!

I may have mentioned...

...that I was pondering on a Space Marine army.
I may have mentioned that this would be done somewhere in the future.
I may have... done the first model *sigh*
It's just a work in progress but it may give you an idea on how the mini will look like.
What you see here is my Space Marine captain: Induna Thembinkosi wich roughly in their language means Chieftain He Who Trusts in The Lord.
Various bits from both the Space Wolf and Space Marine captain sprues were used, his powersword was swapped for a spear (assegaai), the plumes and feathers were scavenged from Empire handgunners and knights and the 'pompoms' around his shins were sculpted by yours truly.

The rules for the Space Wolfs will be used for this army, both still fight in a tribal way.
Why do I keep doing stuff like this...

Moving made easy

It's a public secret that I'm reinstituting my Nercon force and I'm fiddling slightly with a Space Wolf army allthough that's not concrete yet since I might swap them for the Ebony Lions, a Space Marine chapter based on African Zulu's but with the Space Wolf rules.
Two things always made me frown a bit on 40K, one of them is the force organitation wich is pretty much set nomatter how many points you fight over but this has been rectified with Apocalyps and truth be told: you hardly see 2000+ points games on a clubnight anyway.
The second is that the mini's are in a skirmish formation and not rank-and-file and whilst this allows for a great liberty and freedom on the modeling part, it may be a bit tiresom to move your infantery about the battlefield because uptill now GW never made movetrays for 25mm rond bases.
They did, and those trays aren't overly expencive to boot wich almost made me pick some up and I do say ALMOST ....
So they were designed for Lord of the Rings and who cares? They would've been great for 40K.
Only thing is you can only fit 8 models in them instead of 10, why they did this is completely beyond me.
So it was back to square 1 and an expedition on the world wide web for something to my liking both in miniature capacity and price.
E-bay based Fenris Games stepped into that void, they sell plywood movetrays wich fit 5 models.
The trays come on 2 parts: 1 1.5mm solid base and 1 1.5mm cut out piece.
All it takes is a bit of PVA glue to fit the 2 pieces together, they're strong enough to be based, painted and flocked to your taste.
Delivery was very fast and without any problems, I can really reccomend them: http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Fenris-Games_W0QQsspagenameZMEQ3aFQ3aSTQQtZkm

So today I've painted up 10 trays wich will see action tomorrow, the Trusty Rusties will move about even faster from now on!!