Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Thanks guys - Nope, the armour isn't NMM. It's just me playing around with different shades of metallic paints and washes. I bought a bunch of large Vallejo metallic bottles a couple of months ago, so it was a chance to play with them.

I'm really happy with the colours on the ranger as well.

Thanks guys. And after a bit of work today, I'm up to 86 completed models for the year. Of course, that includes 40 tank traps that weren't too gruelling to paint, and 40 dwarves that I started in November and might have finished at the very end of December if Watch Dogs 2 didn't happen... causing both my failure to produce anything in December for the paint challenge and to beat 2015's number with 2016. I guess on the other hand, it gives me a good leg up in 2017 to beat my total in 2016 (and maybe, 2015?).

Part Two then, of my Vikings. These figures were mostly completed in 2016. On the 14th of November if my record-keeping is accurate. Of course, I then realised that the horn-blower who wasn’t yet finished should really have a shield as well, and so completing the sextet went into painting limbo, since the horn-blower isn’t exactly my favourite model from the bunch. Since I had to paint a Viking shield for another model a few days ago, I did this one as well.



His mate in the picture above is one of the smaller figures amongst my metal Vikings, but he’s got a bearing to him, both in the pose and especially in the facial sculpt. Like he’s the sort of bloke you wouldn’t want to mess with. The horn-blower on the other hand looks like he has a big plum for a head, but the ruddy cheeks work for his pose.



Of course, now that I’ve finished it, I’m happy enough with the horn-blower’s shield. Simple, but neat and effective. I went with more muted yellows than I usually do, from almost white into an ochre, rather than orange.



I believe that the larger of these two is a Viking Hearthguard model, and he’s a big chunk of metal. Since he’s chunky and quite well-geared, I gave him a deep red cloak to suggest wealth, and grey hair and a marked face to suggest that he’s both a veteran of many battles as well as (probably) some lucrative international bodyguarding duties. His friend here is painted in simpler, more muted and earthy tones. I tried to “streak” the paint in his shield to suggest a less wealthy origin. Damn, at this scale, the blown-up photographs really emphasise every flaw in the freehand shield painting. They look much neater and straighter at their actual size of 10mm or so.



The final pair are amongst my very favourites of all my Viking models. I think these two are both by Foundry again, but it’s the dynamic posing that really works on these for me. Not a lot more to say about these two. I like the models and I like the way they turned out with paint and their shields added.



These models, like the first half-dozen will be used for SAGA amongst other things. I’ve got a nice selection for my Hearthguard, and the others will make up a unit of Viking Warriors for the time being. I’m still short a model for a final warrior or my Warlord, so I’ll have to get some more done soon. I’ve just finished a few more Vikings, so once they’re dry and flocked I’ll have them up here as well. I can see a lot of the metals here being spread out amongst the plastics eventually to use as unit leaders.



When I got to the second half-dozen of my Vikings, I’d decided much more consciously to paint the shields with a palette that complimented their bearers’ clothing and overall colour scheme. I’d been doing this to an extent with the first set, but I’ve been much more aware of it since then. A flaw in the way I used to paint years ago was trying to get too many colours onto my models, when a smaller palette with more variation of those colours works better for the models far more often.

Damn. No love at all for the second batch of Vikings? Ouch..

Today’s figure is another that was finished back in 2016, that I’m only just getting around to sharing. Like it says in the title of the post, this guy is one of Marauder Miniatures’ MM27 line of Giant Black Orcs.





One of the many ranges released by Trish* and Aly Morrison’s Citadel offshoot Marauder Miniatures were Orcs and Goblins. The Orcs, with their scale mail and Mongol-style helmets were a real highlight of all of their ranges, with a style that remains distinctive even today. Subedai has recently showcased some fantastic looking converted boar boys using these same models.



Part of the Orc range that was a little more limited were the Giant Black Orcs, released around about White Dwarf 128 (August 1990). There were apparently only four sculpts, and so they seem to be designed more as an appendix or supplement to Citadel’s existing line – though back then Black Orcs were an ill-defined thing as far as actual models go. Just pick out your bigger orc models and divide them between “Big’Uns” and “Black Orcs”. I’ve got to say that these Black Orcs were not Marauder’s finest work by a long shot.



Black Orcs of course derive from Tolkien’s Uruk Hai, which GW had a range of, though those seemed a bit “normal sized” even back then. The only distinct Black Orcs to that point were Nick Lund’s Giant Black Orcs from 1985 – also a pretty indistinct set, and Lund’s Regiment of Renown: RR18 – Eeza Ugezod’s Mother Crushers. Citadel’s Black Orcs wouldn’t get their own distinct style again until the mid-1990’s, when they launched that terrible range with the huge horns and ridiculous looking axes. It wasn’t until the early 2000’s when the current, heavily armoured design debuted with the metal range, to be updated a few years later with the current range of plastics – now called “Ironjawz ‘Ardboyz”. The current/2004ish design is easily the best iteration of Warhammer Black Orcs in my opinion, being both distinctive and badass looking.

What does this mean for the Marauder model above? Well, he’ll eventually be rolled into whatever Mantic call Big’Uns in Kings of War (hm… Ax, Greatax, Morax… nothing there that really works for Big’Uns or Black Orcs… I might have to fudge something for our friendly games.) He may occasionally be used in RPGs, skirmish gaming or maybe even Silver Tower. Do they have an Orc character for that yet? I’ll figure it out later…

*Now Trish Carden

Thanks guys. I'm still working on a few more Orcs and Vikings. Hope to have some more up soon. Today though - more dwarves.

In November last year, for some reason I got it into my head to delve into one of my figure boxes and paint up a bunch of Dwarves. Specifically, to go through and paint a bunch of the Battle for Skull pass plastics that I’d picked up from eBay, WargamerAU and my mate, Damo. I think the idea popped into my brain since I’d been painting and finishing a few Slayers around the time and getting stuck into other random dwarves (which I’ve been sharing recently).



By mid-November, I’d actually gathered them up, and selected the figures I was going to paint, and then got into them properly over December. Batch painted, they’re no works of art, but since there were 40 of them and work cranks itself up around November into December, I didn’t get them finished before work broke up for Christmas, as was the plan. All because of their overly-complex sculpted shields. After a few days of rest, I got stuck back into them again, but Marouda bought me Watch Dogs 2 which then proceeded to eat all of my time after I installed it and started playing it. I seriously played for near-17 hours the day I properly started it. From 8am until 1am. Sure, that’s with breaks, but still… I’m finally done with the game now, by the time I got about 2/3 through the story it had started to drag a little, and the result was that after an incredibly strong start I didn't even play it every day to get it done.



These were a pretty quick and simple job for me, though every element is still highlighted and shaded, I did so with an intent of making a solid tabletop standard, rather than my usual care. At one point, I decided that I wanted them to look more work and war-weary than some of the others. Like they’ve been on campaign rather than having just left the keep in freshly washed uniforms. This was because I’d been looking at my unassembled boxes of Warlord’s Napoleonic French Line Lancers while washing my brushes (which I’d bought to turn into some sort of not-Brettonian army). I got to thinking about how Napoleonic uniforms in miniature form always seem so bright, perfect and pristine when the actuality would have been much more filthy and worn. Like in that Napoleon show with Boromir Stark in it. With that percolating in my mind, I decided to hit them all with a brown wash, but then brighten up their axes, helms and paint the shields last – as I felt that Dwarves would always look after their wargear above all else.



I mentioned the shields earlier. They were a hassle, and basically the reason these figures weren’t finished in December 2016, which would have broken my 2015 record/target and not caused me to fail to submit in the final month of the Tale of Gamers challenge I ran on Dakka. Of course there were other reasons. Watch Dogs 2 and burnout/exhaustion from working every day of the week for a period at the end of the year, but the shields were the final hurdle.

If I were painting these models with no “history”, I’d probably have simply painted the Hammer-and-Anvil motif a nice bronze, much like the Dwarf-Mask bling on the Standard bearers. The thing is, when I started to paint the models, I realised that the same design was much older, and is featured on the (Marauder Miniatures) Dwarf Shields that one of my old, Oldhammer Norse dwarves has (and I have a few of these shields left to break out). Since I wanted the new to fit in with the old, being from the same clan(s), I wanted to make sure that they matched. Which meant going from a simple paint/wash/drybrush scheme to one that needed 10 different colours/applications. While keeping it simple. When doing it to almost 40 models, that takes time. Bleugh.



What’s next for the Dorfs? Well, I appear to (almost) have a complete BFSP set between the various secondhand sets I’ve purchased. I’m just short the Dwarven rifles, so I’m going to see if I can get another unit or two painted before I burn out on Dwarves…

 JoshInJapan wrote:
Very nice work, especially considering that those are essentially identical models. How many Dwarfs do you have altogether? It seems to me that you have enough to play Dragon Rampant or something of that size.

Painted or unpainted? These are most of the painted ones, plus the Slayers and random adventurers I've been showing. Unpainted... maybe 400-500 more if you count the Mantic models. I plan to make two forces from the lot - a "normal" dwarf army and a slayer-based one.

 Bottle wrote:
Love the BFSP Warriors! I have those gems in my painting pile. If you can get the Thunderers I do recommend them as they are some of the nicer sculpts in the box (although I like the miners the most).

Sadly I only have about three of them, which is a shame. I've got a unit of the metal ones, though that I picked up from eBay. I want to paint up my gunpowder dwarves as a sub-clan and call them the "Bullet Club". I'm working on cannon crew right now.

How many armies? I'm going to say all of them. And pretty much easily themed multiples of all of them. I honestly have no idea how many. Call it collecting since the late 1980s, not selling anything off since the mid-'90s and a serious buying frenzy over the last year or two.

I've still got some work in cleaning up the War Room, which got turned into a dumping ground over the second half of 2016 due to piles of work and it being a bit cold out there. I'm hoping to get some AoS games up and running as well as so much else, and I've got the General's Handbook to hand as well as several of the digital books.

Thanks guys. The dwarves don't have anywhere near realistic proportions like the LotR ones do, but I've got enough nostalgia for the style drawn back to the Perry's old work, so I can forgive it. In retrospect, I think the more complex shields came up better than bronze would have, even if they took (a lot) longer to finish.

To use a phrase I seem to use a fair bit - Something completely different today:



I have to admit, I couldn’t remember what these things were called and so it took literally minutes of playing internet detective to figure out what the game these things are from was called (and what they are). Armed only with “(illegible) games, 1992” on the bottom of their integral metal bases, google, wikipedia and BGG, I figured it out. Hooray!



I bought these figures back in the ’90s for a few reasons. None of which had anything to do with Legions of Steel. 1) On sale. 2) Because Terminators. And most importantly, 3) They came in little miniatures carrying cases with foam inside. So naturally, I used the cases for a few years, the figures all got shunted into bits boxes, and that was that. I gave the cases away a year or two ago, (I think?) to Tarmor. At some point I found one of them and quickly painted it up, because let’s face it – how hard could it be? Had no idea where the rest of them were, though.

So sometime last year while cleaning up some bits boxes – around the same time as I found and repainted that Judge Dredd RTB01 Space Marine – I found the “Nightmares”. Since I first found out that they’re called that literally 2 minutes before starting this post, I’m just going to call them Terminators from here on in. Anyway, I found the Terminators, and bundled them into a zip-lock bag alongside the tiny number of (licenced) Aliens miniatures I have from the same era. And then put them away in one of my Unpainted Miniatures Storage Cases. And promptly forgot about them until a few days ago, while attempting to tidy up the room where I keep all that crap, I bumbled onto them, sharing space with a bunch of Mantic models.



This being my Summer break from work, and as I’m now getting in some good paint time, I brought them out, lost them, found them again and then painted them from Spray to Varnish to Flock in less than 3 days – most of which was drying time. So now I have a unit of 12… well. I can use them as Terminators in the Terminator Genisys game I picked up on sale during Black Friday. I understand it’s supposed to be quite a good game, but hampered by being massively overpriced for what you get in the box, and an expensive licence that seriously underperformed in the wider market, with the height of it’s popularity being, you know… 25-odd years ago. Still, when it was on sale for £20 I decided to grab it. Also, free rules if anyone wants to try it out.

Failing that I could use them as Necrons in 40k… I just picked up their Start Collecting set, and will probably grab a second one before too long. Or… as Cultists for my Iron Warriors? Hmm….

Thanks Gents. Despite the different bases, I think they'll work well together. My "proper" IW cultists will probably be on the plastic GW tech bases, but I think I'll manage despite the discrepancy.

Yeah, they were - to coin a phrase - piss easy. I've gotten a bunch of the Terminator T-800s out of the boxed sets I picked up recently, with a mind to knocking out a bunch of them just as quickly. I'll leave some to the side for later conversion into the other weapon options. I just have no idea what's worth giving them, or good, or reasonable, so I'll probably just do a couple each of a few of those options while the rest of them will be stock.

Speaking of Vikings, however....

Here's the next post of my small Viking project. A couple of weeks ago, when I got up on the morning of Christmas Eve 2016, I decided to paint up some Vikings, and see if I could get them done by Boxing Day. I very deliberately selected four figures. Two of them were the berserker pair that, while now part of the Foundry catalogue are ex-Citadel models from the truly Oldhammer days. Before everything was All-Warhammer, All The Time, Citadel has small ranges of Normans, Vikings and Feudals under the Fighters/F4 category. When Bryan Ansell resurrected Wargames Foundry as a Historicals company while purging the historical ranges from Citadel, he moved a large number of moulds across that he deemed appropriate. The two berserkers here were amongst the models who made the trip, and as such, are still available today.


Erik and Thorir the Ex-Citadel Foundry Vikings.

I actually owned both models back in the day. Erik, the model with the 2-handed daneaxe was broken at some stage, losing the axe and chunks of both arms – while Thorir, gazing at the sky, was simply lost to time. I notice that there are a couple of other old models that I always liked still available in the Foundry ex- range, so I’ll have to do another Foundry order before too long to pick them up. I should point out though that all of these models, like my other painted vikings in the above-linked posts came courtesy of the Cannon man from work. These two were painted very quickly, and done on time. While painting them, though, I noticed the shield boss on Thorir’s shield. This was unfortunate, as I’d selected all four figures based on getting them done quickly, so the two old-school models that were mostly flesh and pants, and the other two that had a good amount of armour and chain on them – and no shields amongst them! So…. erm.



It took until the first days of 2017 before I got around to painting the shield. I decided on using muted tones for it, to go well with the muted and earthy tones I’d used for both berserkers’ clothing and gear. While I didn’t get the shield pattern perfect, I’m happy with how it came out nonetheless. At the same time I also fished out the model who is the Warlord for the moment – Eureka Miniatures’ Beowulf the Geat – and added some small freehand ravens to his shield, which makes a vast difference to the model in my opinion. I can’t fathom why Nik’s Beowulf range doesn’t have “Viking” keyworded anywhere in it. I’ll have to ring him and point it out since it can’t be helping his online sales. I know that technically, Beowulf predates Vikings by several hundred years, but when you’re selling miniatures…



The next pair of Vikings are essentially “just some guys”. I’m not sure of their manufacturers, though I think it’s pretty safe that they’re from different ranges given the difference in sculpt style. If/when I find out where they’re from, I’ll update. In the meantime I have nothing particularly interesting to write about them. I used a little more in the way of the colour palette on these guys, but still kept them quite muted.



Finally, a group shot of all my completed Vikings to date. There are quite a few more where they came from! I just need to make myself get them done...

I planned to update a couple of days ago, but the events of Friday here in Melbourne put me off hobby-related stuff and it just seemed a little .. I dunno, inappropriate(?) for me to blog about toy soldiers at the time.

Thanks for the words on the Vikings. I've kinda lost the excitement on painting them for the time being, so I think that getting more of them done will be shoved aside in favour of something more exciting as my mayfly-like attention span wanders all around the shop. I need to paint some of my Forge World crap...

@Jehan-reznor - an almost infinite number. I just need to find and paint them all...




Anyway, like a lot of others here, I backed the Conan Kickstarter a couple of years ago, and also like many of us, I had my first wave of stuff arrive recently. Now I only got around to taking the stuff out of the shipping boxes last week, and frankly, I haven’t had the time to look further into the actual boxed game or the equally huge “Kickstarter Extras” box. Boxes. I got two King Pledges…



What I did do while I was cleaning up in the War Room last week and making space to put the Conan stuff onto one of the shelves was notice how nice the models in some of the add-on boxes looked. Specifically, the “Adventure Pack”. The models looked really fine, baby. That is to say that they looked very finely detailed. Much moreso than anything I’d expect to get from a boardgame, and moreso from a kickstarter boardgame where the usual reaction to the models is “yeah, these are pretty decent” or a sadly unsurprising disappointment. After seeing Subedai get busy with some of his Conan models, I thought “why not?” and opened up the adventure pack to paint the contents as they looked like they’d paint up nice and quickly.



So that’s what we have here. Barrels. I haven’t started on the other stuff yet, but the barrels are pretty nice for what they are. I usually paint my barrels up in the standard, admittedly boring way that most of us do. Dark brown wood, metal hoops. Job done. Nothing wrong with that, but with posts by Dagger and Brush on building trees with realistic bark colours resonating in the back of my head, I decided to paint these ones so that they looked a little more …realistic? worn? aged? So they would look like they’ve been left outside in the elements for their time. Faded, stained wood and rusted metal.



Primed white, base coated with Vallejo Skeleton Bone coloured primer and then drybrushed with Reaper HD Arctic Grey. Hoops painted with Vallejo Plate Mail Metal coloured primer and then painted over with very-thinned Vallejo Model Air Light Rust and Orange Rust. The whole thing then washed with 50-50 Army Painter Soft tone wash and windex, and then with Citadel Nuln Oil Gloss. Gloss Polyurethane varnish, followed by Testor’s Dullcote. I’ve got that down here fo rmy future reference in case I end up with more of these barrels or want to recreate the exact look. It’s annoying when you paint everything that you have of some kind of scenery, and then find more somewhere, and then can’t remember exactly how you did them. I found some more of those Confrontation walls recently, and so now instead of having painted them more or less instantly, they’re just sitting there. In fact, I’ve lost them again somewhere. Bah.


Norsemen and their Norse Dwarf cousins discuss the best way to provide scale shots for barrels.

After checking the Kickstarter details, I see that each core pledge box comes with an extra 5 chests. Add those to the 5 in the accessories box and I’ll have 15 chests to paint up. They’re pretty finely detailed, but the thing stopping me from blasting through them now is working out how to paint them. Wood? Iron? Bronze? It’s bloody exhausting!

Thanks. And I do like that idea, Llamahead. I might have to do that in some form. I've got lots of metallic paints, so perhaps different coloured metals. I'll have to check my Zombicide stuff and note down the colours they use.

Thank you. I live in Melbourne, and used to frequent those exact same streets in those very same blocks every day when I was in town for Uni and work, so it's very close to home. I spent most of Friday watching the news unfold and being very, very angry. gak, my wife was in town today and stopped to pick up some paint for me from a hobby store location that the murdering witch drove right past.

Anyway, some more models.

We’ve got two dwarves today. One old enough to quality as right proper Oldhammer, and the other quite recent.



The first of the two, sometimes called “Dwarf Ninja” and other times “Dwarf Rogue” comes from the Dwarf Adventurers line found in the 1988 Citadel Catalogue, meaning he was released around 1887 or thereabouts. Looking through the 1987 Citadel Journal, the Dwarves in there, also by the Perry Twins are of a slightly different style to this one. I got this figure back in the day, started painting him, stopped, then restarted, did what I thought was a great job, screwed it up with a black wash, restarted and finally finished him recently. He’s got a vaguely middle eastern feel, with the scarf around his head, and so I painted his skin in a slightly different-to-usual tone compared to how I usually paint my dwarves. He also has a nice line in thieves’ tools on his belt.



His partner in crime is another of Stonehaven’s dwarves from their 2012 Kickstarter. I’ve shared a few of these figures before now, and if I ever finish painting the lot of them I’ll do a group shot. This dwarf rogue was started a couple of years ago to represent an NPC in our very, very occasional Pathfinder campaign. She fit the bill perfectly, and so a couple of weeks ago I saw the half-painted figure sitting on my desk and finally made myself finish her off. No thieves tools in play here, just a pair of dual-wielded daggers for some stabby good times.

I think they make quite the pair.

Aside from the obvious use in role-playing games and as a character meeple in various board games, I’ve started to think about combining a bunch of the more out-there Dwarf Adventurer types into a unit for Kings of War. Possibly using the berserker stat line to represent them being a bit more reckless but a hell of a lot more dangerous than your regular dwarf. We’ll see…

Thanks all!

Ian - I (think) I started with a mix of very dark grey and black. I then just did the usual sort of shading with pure black and highlighting with the unmixed dark grey and then the next grey up for a couple of layers. Mostly just keeping the paints really thin and avoiding the whole "highlight to white on the edges" mentality - keeping even the lightest edge highlights to to a darker mid-grey, which still pops nicely enough because the rest is so dark. I did darken the whole lot down at one point with a really thinned paint wash of black.

I had tried the same with AP Dark (black) Wash at one point but it wrecked the male dwarf, so I had to start again from scratch. Also for these guys I avoided toning the black or grey with blue, etc.

River Horse Teminator Genisys Plastic Endoskeletons and Endoskeleton Crawlers
Recently I found and painted up a bunch of “Nightmares” from the long-OOP game Legions of Steel that I’d had stored in various boxes of random figures since the 1990’s. Clearly these models were inspired by James Cameron’s Terminator films, and given that I recently purchased some Terminator Genisys starter sets from Warlord Games when they were on deep Black Friday discount (because rofl@£70.00), I figured I should paint up some of the actual figures. The Resistance figures don’t excite me all that much, so I’ll likely not start on those until all of the Machines are done.



I set some of the Endos aside to work out weapon swaps a bit later, and just decided to knock out a set worth as stock figures. If need be, I can run Imperial Guardsmen, etc as Resistance if I want to learn and play the game in the meantime, but let’s be realistic, that’s not happening anytime soon.



I painted these using the same methods as the Nightmares so they share the same palette and will fit in nicely alongside one another. As originally considered, the Nightmares can act as T-600s/Prototype Endos in the Terminator game, and the T-800 Endoskeletons can join the Nightmares as Iron Warriors cultists as needed – more abominations courtesy of the Dark Mechanicum. I also added a few skulls to some of their bases because Terminator.



I also knocked out 5 “crawlers” using the same methods. Not sure what they’ll be used for outside of the Terminator Genisys game, but hey, they were easy to paint and they add another 5 models to my completed numbers for the YTD.


Legions of Steel Nightmares provide T-600/Prototype support to their T-800 Endoskeleton brethren.


T-800 Endoskeletons and Legions of Steel Nightmares as Iron Warrior’s Chaos Cultists.

Silver's so low-stress to paint that I'll take a ton to make me sick of it. Having said that, I've finally forced myself to start on some of my AdMech, so it's always a possibility. No probs on the LoS stuff, either. I was really scratching my head on trying to remember what they were called. I think doing anything other than keeping the Terminator paint jobs simple would have been redundant. Especially at that size - trying OSL or highlights on the eyes, or painting in the teeth would be doable but unnecessarily fiddly, and just fails the miniature painting triage test for me - especially for plastic R&F that are of little individual import. I wanted to keep the bases consistent with the majority of my other minis, and going for ash grey/no grass/etc on such a small cohort of figures would have removed their ability to unify with the majority of other models.

I see what you mean about too tough for cultists, but the 40k scale is pretty condensed. If those hulking armoured marines amongst them in the final shot are T4, then I think it works for the Endos to be T3.

A couple of weeks ago, I started on the Giant Wolves add-on boxed set from the Conan Kickstarter that I painted those barrels for recently.



Anyway, I'd selected these to take a look at alongside the Accessory Pack, and on opening them up was really quite impressed with the models inside. Unfortunately, I didn't take any photos of them before priming or adding paint, (The render above is as good as I have, I'm afraid) but they were really a nice surprise and on par with the fine details of the stuff in the Accessory Pack. Since furry friends are usually on the easier side of the painting spectrum, and inspired by Subedai's recent success in getting Conan's stuff painted, specifically his Hyenas, I got busy with them pretty much immediately.



I initially primed them with Tamiya Grey Surface Primer and no real plan, then came inside to google some wolf images. On doing so, I decided that they would look good with a lot of white involved, and so re-primed them from each side with Tamiya White Surface Primer while leaving them a little darker with the grey down the back.



Once I got them inside I sorted the bases firstly by supergluing some small shards of slate down, and once that was done, I used the sample of "Area 51" scenery glue kindly sent my way from Kibo to affix the sand. I almost always prefer to use PVA because of the higher surface tension of PVA, but given that these models are pre-fixed to their bases, something with low surface tension and flow was much more useful, and the Area 51 was perfect for the job.



Next, I added some Old Citadel Bronzed Flesh (round HMG pots, baby) thinned down to add some buff tones to the fur. Following that it was a combination of a half-dozen photographs of wolves from Google Image Search and painting - utilising a mix of drybrushing and fine detail brushing in various combinations of Vallejo Model Colour Basalt Grey .869, Sky Grey .989, Reaper HD Arctic Grey, and Vallejo's airbrush Black and Schwarzgrau primers, carefully brushed on.



The yellow of their eyes was painted with (discontinued) Citadel Foundation Iyanden Darksun, dotted with a pupil of black. A very-thinned down mix of brown and black was dabbed onto their paws to darken/dirt them a little in contrast to the majority of their pelts. As mentioned, I used various photo references as guides to painting their pelt and facial markings, taking note of the variations of colour and pattern that can be found inside even a single wolfpack with the intent to create models that (can) work as individuals while retaining a unified and natural feel for the entire pack.



A few adventurers face off with the wolves to provide a scale reference. Models like these can of course be used in pretty much any fantasy-esque game, from Pathfinder to Warhammer to 40k to Kings of War. And so they shall be.

 JoshInJapan wrote:
Nice work on the wolves. I'm particularly impressed that you bothered to make them all at least a little different--I'm not sure that I would have had the patience for that.
After seeing your stuff, I'm beginning to regret not backing the Conan KS. Is everything this good?

I honestly haven't opened it up yet, aside from the 3 add-on boxes of the Wolves, accessories and the Tiger. It seems like it's going to be, though and gave me no hesitation on backing their new, Ancient Greek Mythology game.

Thanks Damo! They should be nice and versatile across a lot of games.

Thanks mate.

Thanks guys. I don't think I'll be able to come close to January's output again this year, but it was a nice kickstart to get started. I wasn't super interested in the Conan KS until it had clearly hit the "super deal" levels of value, right at the end. I also saw that it clearly had no chance of delivering on time, so it was actually a lower-stress thing to back. The figures have been surprisingly nice. I wish the "Tiger" was more anatomically correct, though - especially after the wolves. You can see the WIP in the photo below.

But yeah, I started on some Tech Thralls last weekend.



Not too much more to finish them, but I'm kind of stuck. I'm very much a "Red" Mechanicus guy, but I'm trying to decide whether to go with a metallic dark red on armour pieces, or the more typical red that we see here in the WIP shot. The choice will pretty much then be uniform right across all of my Cult Mechanicus, Skitarii and Mechanicum stuff from that point on. Any thoughts?

Thanks. Any feedback on regular red vs metallic? As for my

AdMech, I've got a whole bunch of Forgeworld stuff from the past few years - including more Tech-Thralls (these guys are the paint guinea pigs) a Triaros and a Krios and a bunch of various Automata. None of the really big stuff yet. 2 or 3 Start Collecting boxes, a few boxes of Kastelans/Kataphrons/Skitarii from before SC was a thing, and I've ordered 2 of the recent battleforces awhile ago - if they actually ship. And a few bits and pieces from the RT-era.

All it needs is to be assembled and then painted.

Yeah, I want a dark-ish red, though I don't mind it a bit brighter in the top highlights. Not into orange, but probably what you see there as the top-level highlight. The ones in the pic are as far as I got before stopping to scratch my head and consider metallic, so they haven't been shaded yet and are just the base colour covering the washed/drybrushed silver paint underneath.

The shade of metallic I'm considering is pretty much similar to the Forge World look for Thousand Sons.


If I go the Metallic red rather than traditional, the R&F would have the TS style red above, while more important stuff would have more of a glossy/candy finish. If I can pull it off.

This past week I finally finished off another three Iron Warriors. Both rebasing them on the new Sector Imperialis 32mm bases from their old 25mm ones and actually completing their paint - started well over a decade ago. Yes, I paint slow, but they've also spent a goodly time put away in boxes before I decided to revive the project last year.



Two of these models feature arm replacements. The "champion" has a Necromunda Pit Slave chainsaw arm, along with a 90's-era metal Iron Warriors Shoulderpad. The central warrior has a Melta Gun arm that's taken from a manufacturer of not-40k miniatures, again from the 1990s. It came from one of their Not-Orks, later renamed "Org" and changed to a not-at-all-Ork-based organised crime kind of faction after GW sent them one of their nasty lawyer letters. Because GW owns the concept of Orcs in space. Apparently. They had a game which from memory actually had decent rules. If I ever remember their name, I'll edit it in. Anyway, the Melta Gun arm looked great, and it found its way onto one of my Iron Warriors, a squad with a large number of obvious cybernetic implants and limb replacements. Once again, I've added "IV" decals to the models, to represent their still-present pride in being members of the IV Legion.



Again, aside from mechanical parts from Necromunda models and the Org arm, the models are built with a mixture of parts from modern loyalist marines, modern chaos marines, metal 2nd & 3rd edition-era chaos shoulder pads, Iron Warriors metal parts and Iron Hands metal parts. The central model's head and torso come from the '90s metal chaos marine biker conversion parts.



The third Iron Warrior comes with a not-so-subtle message for any who he may encounter. The chainsword's hazard stripes look terrible when blown up to this size, but at their actual size they look completely fine.



I've got another five of this squad on my paint desk at present to complete, along with another four including a Warsmith in the cabinet waiting to be moved out. Following that I have an old Forge World Castraferrum Dreadnought and Vindicator to find and fix up - both purchased many years ago before the FW kit was replaced with the Citadel kit. Then I can move onto newer purchases, newer models and newer plans for my Iron Warriors.

Iron Within! Iron Without!

Thanks guys. Pertuarbo is "on the list", though not near the top of it at this stage. Truth be told, I don't love the model as much as I'd hoped before it was released.

Thanks Josh. You're right - there's an awful lot of metallics on my plate right now between the Minotaurs, Iron Warriors, AdMech... and my small Alpha Legion force will also be metallic, and likely both red and blue Thousand Sons. Forge World has to take some of the blame, but those coloured metals just look great to my eye.

Started this morning wanting to paint (and finish) at least 1 more of the Iron Warriors assault squad. Finished washing their bases, but spent most of my painting time working on 5 Orcs. To get them out of the way so I can work on the IW. Of course.

One day, Damo, one day...

I'll need to finish a fair few more Men of Iron first, though.



Remember Sedition Wars and it’s incredibly-successful Kickstarter? Of course you don’t. That’s because you either never heard of it, or the complete abortion of a game and fulfilment means you’ve blocked it from your memory like a terrible life experience, which it very much was. I was one of the ones taken in by a love and respect of Mike McVey going back decades to my youth and being foolish enough to believe the h̶y̶p̶e̶ lies of the campaign put on by Studio McVey and CMON to the tune of quite a few hundred dollars for my multiple pledges. Anyway, this post isn’t to bitch about the pile of money I flushed down the toilet in a mess of warped boards, terrible unplaytested rules and restic models.



It’s about the one bright spot of the entire project (aside from the textured bases, I guess). The Terrain Set. More specifically, for this post, the barricades. I’ve been buying a bit of stuff for FFG’s various Star Wars games in the past 6 months or so, and part of that has naturally involved looking at pictures of stuff.



Not my work, but the work that inspired these getting painted after all this time. While looking at Star Wars stuff, I came across some pics on Agis Neugebauer’s blog. Now, he’s a poster here on Dakka, and I’m somewhat familiar with his work posted on these forums, but I hadn’t seen his Star Wars Imperial Assault stuff before. Lots of great stuff there, including an Oskara conversion that I will totally be ripping off, but Agis’ also has a bunch of the Sedition Wars stuff painted up, and looking pretty bloody sweet. This triggered the “Hey, I’ve got those somewhere!” reaction, and off I went to find the crates, and while doing so, also grabbed out the barricades.



The barricades got finished first. Sprayed a custom green based on Vallejo’s 890 Reflective Green, then oversprayed with Plastic Soldier Company’s German Field Grey (Don’t buy their spray cans – they leak!). I then added the Lambdas, taken from a Warlord Games decal sheet (I would have preferred some white outline tank numbers from the WLG German Turret sheet, but I didn’t have any, and Lambdas are totally a thing in modern military markings and so in my mind help these pieces fit anything from near-future to 40k. I then drybrushed the barricades with Army Painter’s Army Green, and then Vallejo Bonewhite on the extremes. Some foam-weathering with Vallejo Metal Black, Vallejo Plate Mail Metal coloured primer and Vallejo Scorched Brown. Followed up with a spray of Plastic Soldier Company’s Dirt Brown Weathering Spray (they leak, FFS!), wiped down with a damp cloth, and finally a quick go-over with some of the foam-weathering, and they were ready for a heavy spray of gloss polyurethane varnish for protection, and then the good old Testor’s Dullcote to make them look good.



I also wanted to avoid any overtly-distinguishing iconography that would tie them too closely to any particular universe. So this meant no Imperial Aquilas or Imperial Cogs, and the dirty weathered look fits pretty well with just about anything, except maybe an especially-shiny game of Infinity. I can’t see pre-fab barriers getting carefully cleaned before being loaded into a transport between deployments, after all.



I have 12 barricades in total and I think they came up very nicely, but I’m also quite aware that looking at the individual weathering patterns on each of them isn’t exactly enthralling blog content, so here are some more posed shots with a few of my Imperial Guardsmen from the Terror Australis Regiment providing scale. Also, a sneak preview of my next mat review…

One day we'll finally have that game. Or games. Maybe after 8th hits if 40k becomes less of a messy nightmare?

I keep getting distracted from those Thralls. I'm going to have to do some test models to find a way I'm happy with for the metallic red. But first, I need to clear a bunch of crap off my painting desk. To wit:

A bit over a year ago I busted open my Mars Attacks Accessory sets, and got to (slowly) working on the contents (occasionally). So far, I’ve finished the incredibly unimpressive result of 8 box stacks, from the four sets I had. Recently, I’ve finished a few other bits and pieces. Namely, the STOP signs, and the benches.



You can’t really tell here, but there’s a subtle metallic as part of the red and I tried out Warcolours Metallic White on the white sections. I did this to emulate the reflective qualities of real STOP signs, at least those located in Melbourne, where I live. I initially tried the metallic white over silver but it worked poorly, so I repainted the details in white, and then went over with the Metallic White. Even in-hand, the metallic effect needs to be pointed out with an “oh yeah, now I see it” result. A kinda generic grungy grey for the bases.



The benches. To me they seemed much more like public bus (or tram) stop-style benches than anything else. In keeping with this, I painted them in a horribly-plasticy bright orange, of the sort that would have been seen back in the 1980’s. Of course, back in the 80’s here the bus stop benches were made of concrete and wood, and painted a dark green. I dunno, I could have gone with a sleeker, more modern silver which would have been easier, but I felt that a harsh, bright colour (then dirtied a little) is a little more evocative of actual urban city streets. And the horrid orange just “feels” right for a bus stop. I used Warcolour’s Orange “One Coat”, though naturally, it took multiple coats to actually cover over the base silver spray. So much for “One” Coat…



Scale shot with thanks to a Minotaurs Space Marine and a T-800 Endoskeleton. I think these will be perfect for any modern/post apoc and even urban sci-fi battlefield that’s not too far removed from “Earth-like” environments. One day I might even paint up my Secret Weapon tiles from their Kickstarter. Seems like a Summer project…



Oh, and as an addendum. I found these yesterday. Ignore the game of Runebound in progress and note the ten(!) additional accessory packs that were inside a tub of Mars Attacks scenery when I was looking for an unassembled incomplete Imperial Bastion. That’s a hell of a lot of mould-line scraping before I can get to the easy-ish part of painting up all that scatter terrain…

Thanks Josh!

This time I have a very “Oldhammer” Warhammer Orc Warrior, known as “Slyss” from the 2nd-3rd Edition era, sculpted by Kev Adams. I bought this guy and started to paint him long, long ago and only recently found him in a Chessex case and made myself complete him.



As can be seen, he’s one of those models with the huge, spiky shield boss. A big part of getting this guy finished was simply deciding what to do with it. The easier option would have been to make it a big, nasty spike. The other obvious option, though a little more involved was to follow Oldhammer tradition and turn it into a 3-D shield, and use the boss as the basis for a nose. Obviously, I went with the latter. I built up very slight brow ridges, bridge of the nose, cheekbones, lower lip, teeth and nostrils with liquid greenstuff. Mostly so the shield wouldn’t look like a completely flat piece with a big spike sticking out of it. The bridge of the nose and nostrils then, were the most important aspects.



The earliest reference I can find of this guy is in the 1987 Citadel Journal, which pretty safely dates the model to 1986-87. He’s an evil-looking bastard, alright – and a good example of the whole “older models have character” thing that people like to bandy around – and overuse at times. With such squinty eyes and a weird-as-hell mouth – he fits in here. He’d work okay these days as some sort of Chaos Mutant, painted in more human skin tones.



Rear view shows the slightly crude, but still detailed sculpting of Kev Adams’ early Warhammer Orcs. Along with the crocodillian mouth and face that is oddly reminiscent of some renditions of trollface. Also, my awesome handpainted woodgrain shieldback.



This pic is the money shot – my show-off pic for the freehanded Ogre-Face shield design. No radiating black sun lines or chequerboard on this one. Just the nasty face, scowling at the world in front.

Thanks guys. I guess sometimes it's quite beneficial to have a big ol' nose!

I've pulled out some almost-as-old Orcs to work on bit by bit, but it'll be awhile no doubt before they're done. You'll be glad to know that only 3 of the 5 are standing around oddly (though 2 are Bolt Thrower crew, so I guess we can fogive those guys) but 2 of them could be said to be "in the fight".

I have recently finished some 4th ed-era orcs though, so they should be ready to show very soon once the varnish, photos, etc are all done. And a Heartbreaker Big'Un (or Black Orc?) just a few minutes ago.

The liquid greenstuff "sculpting" was pretty much just slowly layering it on, and pushing it around to the right places, then letting it dry and doing another layer. A slow and tedious process, but trying to get actual putty or GS on that shield would have been even more painful.

Recently I completed and showed off the barricades from the Sedition Wars Kickstarter’s Terrain Set. Today I have some more scatter terrain to share – specifically the crates.



Once again, these were inspired by the ones from Agis Neugebauer’s blog. I liked the weathering that he put into the crates, and also liked the contrast created via the red straps. He did use transfers to define them with Imperial cogs, and once again I decided to skip any markings that would tie them to any one universe, so they can be used in anything from “movie-style” Bolt Action WWII (when we don’t go to great pains to ensure historical accuracy of the design of all the crates left around that are being used as cover, through moderns, Star Wars (we can see how well they work above), near-future, post-apocalyptic right through to the 41st Millennium, where mundane things still often look strangely familiar…



The proud warriors of the Minotaurs Chapter provide scale reference alongside members of the Terror Australis Regiment of the A̶s̶t̶r̶a̶ ̶M̶i̶l̶i̶t̶a̶r̶u̶m̶ Imperial Guard. As can be seen, I gave them a light weathering, though not to the level of detail or care that Agis did on his. As far as scatter terrain goes, they’re really just more of the same sort of stuff I usually churn out at the level I’m happy to go with, generally. Not superbly exciting by any means, but additional, solid looking stuff that looks better than simply a spray and wash, a bit of extra weathering, though not nearly to the effort put in by people like D&B in his diorama-level pieces. Oh, I also found and finished one more of those U.S. DUST Tactics Supply Drop Crates, so it gets a guest appearance in this photo.

And finally, some “in action” type shots alongside some of the other appropriate scatter terrain I’ve finished in roughly the last year (so no stop signs here!) DUST Tactics Supply Drop Boxes, DUST Tactics Dragon’s Teeth and Confrontation Walls, and the very recent Sedition Wars Terrain Set Barricades. There’s not a lot of height variation, nor any foliage, but just these bits of scatter make a passable battle site for a small combat patrol sized skirmish.