Citadel Carrion Painted

I finished this lovely Oldhammer mini in December, but I've kept it secret until I could surprise Bodvoc with it in our first Dark Shadows game (more on this in an upcoming post).

Initially I thought the mini fairly dull.  To be honest, pretty much just all vulture feathers and flesh, and a black robed mini skelly didn't inspire me.  Looking for inspiration online showed lots of images of nearly black minis with very little else to grab the eye.  I dragged it out of the unpainted undead pile because I wanted something fast and flappy for my army.

As I looked closer I appreciated the details, its a nasty, rotting smelly corpse that still flies.  It has patches of wing missing any feathers, the leathery skin still allows flight.  There are areas where flesh and skin are missing completely, the neck is exposed down to the spine, and the head is mostly bare skull and beak.  Even the underneath has the organs exposed, along with a couple of ribs.

I don't think I've done it justice, but I've had fun trying.

Undead bird after your chips!

Flap flap flap

I'm sure those should be on the inside

I really enjoyed painting this beast, hopefully it was a pleasant surprise for Bodvoc as it strafed his dwarves, or tried to.

What Next?

I do have a few more secret projects for the campaign, expect them when they've had their first appearance on the table top.

Otherwise,  I'm in the middle of Dave Stone's Paint What You Got Challenge,  so I'll be plugging away at that until February 26th. 

PWYG 25/26 and AMAC 26 Further Progress

I'm around three weeks into Dave Stone's Paint What You Got Challenge and a couple of weeks into Anne's Miniature Assembly Challenge.  

So how's it going?

PWYG

Well it's been a busy week outside of the hobby (lots of music), and I've done very little painting, so PWYG has been a bit in the background apart form a bit more paint on those zombies.  I haven't even managed to finish of the 

AMAC

I have managed to assemble another five gnolls, finishing the plastic gnolls I wanted for the second Rangers of Shadow Deep mission.  There's still the Herbalist/Shaman, but he's the metal model I got at RECON last year, so doesn't count for the assembly challenge.

The next batch of gnolls

Four of the gnolls are pretty standard, I used the crossbows this time, rather than bows. For a bit of variety,  I used the greataxe from the first Frostgrave Barbarians set. It fits pretty well on the gnoll bodies,  and the bits of armour help sell the idea of the sergeant being a bit tougher. The arms are a bit more muscled than the gnolls, but I guess the sergeants get first dibs on any protein?

Whats Next?

I want to get soem Dunedain built for the early scenarios in the Fellowship of the Ring book.  These will be kitbashed, based on the GW plastic Rangers of Gondor.  I plan on adding a few bits from various sprues to make them look less like the Rangers of Ithilien, so hopefully they count in the challenge.

I've a couple more minis I'd like to build too, more on those later.

PWYG 25/26 Progress Update, and More Challenges

Well, two weeks into Dave Stone's Paint What You Got Challenge, so how's it going?

Here's where I've got to so far. Nothing is actually finished, but I've got a fair bit of painting done. I'm waiting for suitable weather/a varnish restock/better light to complete the current batch.

I've also joined two more challenges, one of which shouldn't interfere with progress, the other has caused me to change the order in which I do things, more on this later.

The Tower, First Batch 

The first five gnolls

I started with a sprues' worth of Frostgrave gnolls; five minis. In this case I built two fighters, two archers and one sergeant.  They should all be quite easily identified by their equipment. 

I used a combination of Speedpaints and Xpress paints on these.  I'm sure I could achieve a better result with base coat, wash, highlights etc, but nowhere near as quickly. 

The gnoll's flesh was a 1:1 mix of Army Painter Speedpaint Sand Golem and Pallid Bone.  Once thoroughly dry I added Vallejo Xpress Paint Copper Brown for the shaggier hair, principally the 'mane' and head. I added a few spots of this on the less hairy skin areas too, after all, they are supposed to be hyena type humanoids. 

The various bits of cloth bandage and wraps were a 1:1 mix of APS Pallid Bone and White. I wanted this to stand out from the skin colour,  which just Pallid Bone wouldn't have done. I'm considering going over this with a grey colour,  for even better contrast. 

The various cloth colours came from my APS collection, often mixed with Pallid Bone for a more realistic look.

As of this post, I've still to finish these gnolls, but it's mostly the little details. You know, the ones that take the longest.

Three Reaper Bones

As I was painting the gnolls, I added three Reaper Bones to the batch; another Shadow Knight (in case we use the Challenge setting), a Vulture for the first scenario, and an elf, simply because I seem to be short of male Rangers; in that cloak, his fey features aren't obvious. 

The vulture is just about finished; Speed/Xpress paints again, with a few Vallejo Game Color paints for a few little details.  The wing tips are red as, apparently, the forces of the Shadow Deep do this as part of a ritual to control the birds.

Happy campers

I've also done a bit of scenery.  The first scenario calls for a gnoll camp; I had planned on making up some crude tents and perhaps a campfire.  Then I found a couple of resin tents and a log with adventuring gear. These are from Scotia Grendel Productions, and were given to me by Grim many years ago.  I'm missing the campfire, but hopefully that will turn up eventually.

They were given a quick wash in hot soapy water, then I tried a slightly different prep for the Slapchop. 

I gave them a prime with Vallejo German Green Primer,  then a wash of Army Painter Strongtone,  and finally a heavy drybrush of Vallejo Model Color Sand. 

Then it was a case of various Speedpaints and Xpress paints as required. 

The change to the priming and washing was to try and improve the colour in deep shade areas and to give a warmer look; appropriate, I think, for the canvas and the tree. 

I like the results, and I'll experiment further. 

The little details, such as shields, bottles etc were painted in using my normal minis paints.

These are nice models, though perhaps not quite how I imagine gnolls to go camping.  The shields are either Crusader shields (I have tried to make this less obvious with my colour choice) or a Celtic design,  an odd combination. 

Ten assorted zombies

Finally,  I'm continuing with these ten zombies for my Warlords of Erehwon undead.  I started them before Christmas and they are a mixed bunch of manufacturers. 

Like the zombies themselves,  progress continues slowly. 

More Challenges?

I found out about Anne's 2026 Miniature Assembly Challenge from Dave Stone's blog. Essentially, it's to assemble minis, something that I planned to do anyway.  The challenge runs until the end of January,  so I'm weighting my mini building this month with the hope that I can do the bulk of the painting in February. 

To this end I'm building all the gnolls for The Bridge Guards scenario, and I might do the Dunedain for the first couple of The Fellowship of the Ring scenarios as well.  I'll convert some of the plastic Rangers of Gondor, so hopefully they'll count as assembled too. 

I've also got an individual mini or two that I'd like to get done, but these are very much extras.

So my pledge is to assemble ten more gnolls (might as well get three sprues worth done).

Plus 4 to 9 Dunedain, depending on how many I can find. 

And as a bonus I'd like to kitbash a Dark Emissary for Bodvoc's Dark Shadows campaign. 

Assembled Gnolls

Here's five more gnolls,  assembled and ready for painting.  There's nothing special about them, though I've swapped bodies for the archers and warriors for a bit of variety.  I'm keeping the body with bits of armour for the sergeants, and this time I've given him one of the hooded heads as a badge of rank.

Five assembled gnolls

Bonus Ranger

Whilst looking through my sprues I found a cloaked Frostgrave Barbarian. I like my rangers to wear cloaks, so with a bit of shaving off of various teeth and other trophies, plus a head and arms from the Oathmark Human infantry sprue, here's another Ranger of Alladore.

A new ranger

What's next?

More assembling, obviously, but I still plan to get some painting done this month; I might as well get the stuff I've started finished, and I've a game pencilled in with Bodvoc for the end of the month for which I need to finish off a unit (and paint from scratch a new mini, but I haven't 'got' it yet, so it doesn't count for PWYG).

Oh, and one more challenge

Rantings From under the Wargames Table has challenged hobby bloggers, follow the link for details.

Here's his suggested list of blogs to at least glance at.  There's a lot, but I've found them to be interesting and entertaining, I'm even following some of them long term now.

Azazels Bitz Box

Bogenworld

Carrion Crow Buffet

Dead Dicks Tavern

Fantorical

Gisby’s Gaming Blog

Guru Pig

Imperial Rebel Ork

Just Needs Varnish

Leadballoony

Mark A Morin

PM Painting

Pat’s 1/72 Military Diorama’s

Skinflint Games

SP’s Projects Blog

The Imperfect Modeller

War Through The Ages & Other Dark horrors

Wargames sculptors blog

Anne’s Immaterium

Dragons Of Lancasm

Fawcett Avenue Conscripts

 The wargaming erratic

The bovine overlord

not quite mechanised

And, of course, the aforementioned Rantings From Under the Wargames Table

To these I'll add: 

Realm of Chaos 80s, ideal for  Oldhammer stuff

The War Crow, run by my long time friend/opponent Bodvoc

And good friend T'Other One's Vault of the Undead, (not just undead)

Please give them a look, and follow them if there's anything of interest to you. 

Speaking personally, the best thing you can do is to leave a comment.  It gives me a boost to know that fellow hobbyists like what I'm doing, and really helps inspire me to do more.

And if you like the idea of the challenge, the details are on the original post.