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With these chaos marines you are really spoiling us ambassador...

I love what you've done with them.

As good as ever, Sir. I really like that you did a variety of Legions rather than just one, and the tiny bit of conversion work on the Nurgle Marine really sets it apart.

As a painter of the "once it's done it's done" variety what motivates you to go back and re-visit miniatures that you have already painted?

Good job on those marines.

Now those are true chaos marines like when I was a Lad. I've got a few of the metal Slaanesh marines with the guitar/bolter and frohawk set aside somewhere. I tried doing the cheetah prints and rainbows on him to no avail.

Thanks guys - I'm happy with how they came up in the end. Theo - I've still got those guy unpainted to boot. They're one of the (many) things on my list to do once I finish the backlog I'm working through.

 Thraxas Of Turai wrote:
As good as ever, Sir. I really like that you did a variety of Legions rather than just one, and the tiny bit of conversion work on the Nurgle Marine really sets it apart.
As a painter of the "once it's done it's done" variety what motivates you to go back and re-visit miniatures that you have already painted?

Good question. The main thing motivating me is wanting to rebase the really old models so I can happily use them again because many are on square bases with gakky green flock. When I rebase them, it's generally pretty easy to do a bit of touch-up on some, and it also motivates me to "fix up" figures that I dislike the paint on for one reason or another. There's enough time passed between these as well (generally 5-20 years) so that it doesn't feel like I'm redoing something I just finished, and I've found quite a few times that it results in taking figures that I considered gak or disliked and turning them into something I now enjoy and appreciate. These three models were ones I considered gakky old models which were hidden in an old figure case and now with a small amount of work I can actually appreciate them. Often it's just been the difference between overly bright or garish colours (and poor colour choices) that were my best emulation of the 90's GW style at the time that took a few years for me to see how awful they really were.

These guys are all examples of this - simply due to the original paint (and the original weapon swap in the case of the single ogre. I'd actually intended to get rid of most of the unit of Golfags' Ogres before I went back over them and found a new appreciation for them. The Slannesh beastman was just hideously garish, and the Khorne one had a horrible lurid green as a badly-done "complimentary" colour. All of the below figures (as well as the Space Crusade CSM) were ones that I really disliked before doing the rebase and touch-up to them.

You paint so fast! Geez!

Looks good though.

You have a never ending supply of ridiculously old school models. They're great!

I really enjoyed Space Crusade and Heroquest. Probably would have been the first foray into the world of tabletop. Wonder how the Space Crusade Plastic Dreadnought would have matched up with todays dreadnoughts.....

 Archer wrote:
I really enjoyed Space Crusade and Heroquest. Probably would have been the first foray into the world of tabletop. Wonder how the Space Crusade Plastic Dreadnought would have matched up with todays dreadnoughts.....

To be fair, the SC Dreadnought is still a pretty big(height-wise anyway) model, with a hell of a lot of guns, when compared to the dreadnoughts of today.

For some reason, the Deredeo Dreadnought feels like it's taken at least partial inspiration from the SC Dread. Even though they really don't look alike at all.

And now.... WarZone!

Nope, not the new Prodos models. I almost went big on their KS during the PM phase, but I asked them a couple of questions and while they did get back to me after a few days, by the time they did I'd already spent my money, and getting that big bundle of cash together again was on my "yeah, I need to do that" list until it kinda got forgotten about and the PM expired. So I missed out on some lovely new figures, and they missed out on my big pile of cash.

Anyway, these models are Heartbreaker sculpts from (when else?) the 1990's and painted in either the '90s or the early '00s. I never played Dark Legion, but picked up the odd sculpt that I felt had 40k crossover appeal, and then later bought quite a lot more during their final "Fire Sale" period. I've already showcased a bunch of their Zombies as part of my Nurgle Lost and the Damned force. As such, they were painted with obvious 40k influences, but without going the whole hog in case I decided to play WarZone 1e again some time.



The Nepharite of Algeroth, with his big-arse chain-halberd thing makes an ideal follower of Khorne. Algeroth in the WarZone canon being the d̶i̶e̶t̶y̶ Apostle of War. Hmmm...

I decided to paint him in a Khorne-inspired palette, but avoid the whole "blood spatter" thing. I gave the Kev Adams face sculpt some face-paint, to bring out the skull-like aspects of his visage even more. His gloves are made of flayed leather skin, and I kept the rest to red, black, brass and iron - with the exception of the Hazard Stripes on his chainblade. Health & Safety at the forefront, wot?



The Razide I decided for whatever reason to paint as a follower of Tzeentch. I guess the more obvious deity might have been Nurgle, what with the Swamp Thing face and the boil-looking growths on the shoulders and so forth. The tubes were originally painted in way too many colours, which I recently turned into reds, shaded with brown ink. The Tattoos... well, throughout the 1990s one of my biggest influences in many ways was Henry Rollins. I admired the man's integrity, his no-bs ethos, and of course the live performances of Rollins Band were pretty impressive, with all that raw power and intensity. I also thought he made a great template and influence for wargaming models. Remember, this was back in the days when tattoos were mostly the domain of Bikers, people in the military, rather rough types of people, and musicians. They weren't on every second guy you met, and certainly not on every second girl. The tattoos on the bikers and rougher people I knew (family & friends of) were far too small and intricate to work in miniature scale, so Rollins became a bit of a default for inspiration, with his large, distinct pieces that worked from a distance. I'll just point out a few of the obscured ones. "LOVE" and "HATE" on his knuckles. With a cheeky ? on the thumb of LOVE = "LOVE?"



There's a pentagram on his right thigh that's hard to see in the pics, and the text across his lower back says "SCARRED" in a stylised font.





And finally, a scale shot with a Metal Guardsman I had to hand. Both are pretty handily Ogre-Sized:



These two will likely be rolled into other Lost and the Damned forces - Khorne and Tzeentch at some future time when I have a hell of a lot more models painted. Until then, they're mostly just going to sit in the figure cases. The Nepharite of Algeroth might make it into a Kings of War Chaos-themed force, I guess. He could be a "Minotaur Hero" to the old-school RoC Beastmen.

The Razide is still available from Prince August who bought out the remaining WarZone stock sometime 20-off years ago when Heartbreaker collapsed, but the Nepharite of Algeroth seems to have been sold out. I'm sure they'd be easy enough to pick up from eBay, etc, though.





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 EyeamRai wrote:
You paint so fast! Geez!
Looks good though.

Nah. What tends to happen is I finish things in batches, and I've also got a decent backlog of things to show off that I've finished this year. So on a good weekend I might finish 7 models from various ranges, which then takes awhile to photograph and show off. I spent almost all of last week spring cleaning (like from 7am till midnight some days) and between that and Mad Max on PS4 (and World of Tanks on PC) I have barely picked up a brush, and even then it's been to try and paint some (roughly) 1:7 scale Vampire heads for a friend's garage kits. I've got a half-dozen Black Numenorians, 8 Night Goblins and a few more old-school Beastmen, Chaos Warriors and Chaos Sorcerers that I should be able to get finished in about 2 days of dedicated painting. If I can manage to get myself motivated for a couple of days of dedicated painting. So they're all well overdue now.

I lurk lots from the shadows, but damn, those two models have a good old-timey vibe about them. First thing to pop into my mind is Andy Chambers with a beard and mullet.

Also, the first guy has an awesome KISS vibe to him, like he's been ripped from a 80's metal album cover.

OOh... that's a bloody good idea. I'm not especially a fan of KISS, but now I'm gonna have to give a set of 4 (5? 6?) guys KISS makeup at some point!

I was too much of a GW/Citadel nerd in the 90's to have played Warzone, but I liked a lot of their minis (I still have a considerable pile of whatever their Samurai-in-Space faction was). You have really done justice to them. I'm particularly impressed with the flesh tones on Meat Thing ('cause he's made of meat, not swamp muck. Get it?). Also, all the 90's red makes me nostalgic.

Please tell me you have an Ezoghoul to show.

I love your time machine minis and style.

And if I recall, Mishima was the space samurai faction.

Oh wow, didn't expect to see Warzone minis out of you. They look awesome! I can't help but feel Target Games was sort of the Mantic of their day, trying to do their own thing but copying GW just enough to be cross compatible. I'd love to see your Legionnaires.

Yep, Mishima. I have a few of those to paint one day. Sadly, no Ezoghoul in my collection, though.

Barzam - I've shown a few over the last few years. Some are scattered through this thread, but an easier way would be to have a look through here:
https://azazelx.wordpress.com/category/warzone/

That's a pretty fair description of Heartbreaker with WarZone in a lot of ways. The biggest difference was that Their game was actually going gangbusters and was really popular. The figures weren't as nice, but the game was probably the biggest rival to 40k ever. Heartbreaker went down not due to poor sales or mismanagement, or Rackham slliness, but because their parent company went down and took Heartbreaker down with them. Oh, what might have been....

Warzone 1e was a really good game. I should probably relearn the rules and try to play it again (using whatever models work). Just a shame I never seem to have time to play much anymore...

Did you play VOR?

Nope, never played VOR or Kryomek. I did pick up a couple of VOR figures which I converted into Chaos/Necromunda-type models (and then never painted) - but I was all about the GW games and WarZone at the time.

Today we have something that's somewhat recent and still available. I just finished these a couple of days ago, varnished them yesterday and finished the static grass this morning.
Six Black Númenórean Warriors from Citadel's Lord of the Rings range. I don't recall when these were released exactly, but the slotta says 07 so it would have been either 2007 or 2008 most likely. These models are exceptions to the "no starting anything new" rule I've got in place, as the "stuff I can paint 90% of at work" rules overrides the former rule. As I've noted before, a limited palette and a simple job to do (usually highlighting black cloth or painting bone) works well for me at work, and keeps me interested in the hobby when I'd otherwise be tired and (more) burnt out.



I wanted to paint these in a slightly more interesting (to me) manner than the usual, which is essentially dirtied-up steel with black robes, but still retain the proper feel of these Morgul troops. I've seen some really nice looking Morgul Knights (these guys on horses, basically) painted with deep sea green robes, but I wanted to maintain stronger visual ties through their palette being in tune with both the Ringwraiths and also (and more importantly) The Mouth of Sauron figure.



I kept the dark robes, highlighted via blending rather than drybrushing which I've used in the past for similar models. Sadly the highlighting seems to be a bit washed out in these pictures, but something I absolutely wanted to avoid was over-highlighting the robes to light grey or white, which seems to be a common solution for many painted - because the robes are black. I used my usual black palette, of blends between Army Painter Black and VMC - Black Grey and Basalt Grey. Basalt Grey is plenty light enough for these guys.



For the metal areas, I tried a new technique. First I painted the armour and shields with Vallejo Chainmail undercoat with a little bit of VMA Bright Brass mixed in. Two glazes of Citadel Seaphim Sepia Shade, and then an edge highlight of VMA Gold. Sword blades were done with Army Painter Plate Mail, washed with AP Dark Tone, and then edge highlighted with Plate Mail again.

Faces were done with VMC Sand, shaded with a paint wash of Fire Dragon Crimson, which is a very old Citadel paint that's actually a purple shade and then touched up with sand. A bit of black around their mouths and teeth picked out with VGC Elfic Flesh. Leather on the sword handles and shield straps were done with AP Chaotic Red (which is more of a deep red-brown) and washed with AP Strongtone. Done!

The reason I've documented exactly how I painted them here is because I've found that I have literally a dozen more of these guys, as well as a single pair of Castellans of Dol Guldur, who may well get the same paint scheme, given how similar they are in look and feel, and to add more variety to the scant three poses that the Black Númenóreans have.



As you can see, I attempted some minor conversion with these initial six when I got them years ago. I clipped some shoulder spikes from one of the models, and turned one of those spikes into a "rear" headspike on one of the other models. Without going into Chaos Warrior-style spikiness, I'm not sure how I can easily add any differentiation to the dozen others I have of these three sculpts. I'm not willing to go so far as to resculpt parts, and these models aren't exactly conducive to headswaps, so there's probably not a lot going to happen here.

The eventual Army of Mordor will find a home both in the various LotR games, as well as Kings of War. Plenty more to paint before I worry too much about that, though... Perhaps these guys will find their way onto the table alongside Marouda's Undead army as Allied troops.

I think the blends look great Az, it is a shame that there were so few poses cast for the BM. Good idea on leaving yourself a personal painting guide too.

Wow. Three of those guys would be fun to paint, a dozen more would be a grind. I reckon they'll look good on the tabletop, though.

Thanks Thraxas - the polyurethane varnish leaves a bit of a sheen, which with the lighting for photos seems to have messed up some of the shading (for the photos, anyway)

They could easily become that, Josh. Luckily working on them at work during my breaks (about 20mins per day in practical terms) prevents it from becoming a grind. Then stuff at home (like applying the washes) just takes a few minutes at a time.

Top quality work. I really like these models. Lots of detail and character. I think your colour choices are excellent.

Bad-ass models! the pale gold and black work perfect with the slightly visable lower face in the purple hues, makes them look evil! :-)

The Black Numenoreans wouldn't look too out of place in an Undead army as Wights methinks..

Awesome stuff, I've always liked those minis, but the cost to get enough to be useful wasn't really manageable for my younger pocket-money-reliant self.

My biggest hope for the LotR range just before it began dying was that we'd get plastic on-foot Black Numenoreans and Knights of Dol Amroth to go with their mounted counterparts (which I believe were the last pre-Hobbit releases?).

Great work on the BNs! The colour choice is perfect. Top notch painting too.

And as someone who also paints in lunch breaks, I understand the need for a simple paint scheme to work with.

Thanks guys. We've already got more than enough Wights and Wraiths from the LotR Barrow-Wights and Army of the Dead ranges.

Here's the (Barrow) Wights (and a ringer)


I also have the Otherworld Wights and a Lich to paint up, who will make a nice, second unit of Wights. (Not to mention a possible use for some of the Ringwraiths.

I've just realised that the Army of the Dead figures haven't ever been photographed. I'll have to sort that out. Not that they're anything special, being painted in that same ethereal style that GW has been using for undead/ghosts/spectres ever since they debuted those AotD models...

Agreed it's a real shame that they never released plastics of these models to give some more variety, as these three are so hard to convert. I guess they did that with most of the LotR metal range - having such a limited set of poses for them.

That's what it's all about, Bottle. 5 paints, a few figures and (generally) just one aspect of them to work on - preferably something that's tedious at home - and then chip away at it for a short while each day. Magically, when painting at work it's not actually tedious!

Those guys are sweet, nice work.

Ideal minis considering the month there Azazel Nice work!

The LotR stuff is looking great!