Monday, 6 April 2020

More Star Saga Minions

Here are the last of the Star Saga Minions.


Corporation Rangers

I used effectively the same scheme and technique as the Marines, but I added some camouflage to the fabric of the trousers and the hard armour. I'm not convinced it's worked that well, but it does differentiate them from the ordinary Marines.
For the fuel tank on the back of one of them I applied a glaze over the base colours which, I think, gives a nice effect, though it doesn't show up very well on the photo.



Plague Victims

My Deadzone minis are currently unavailable, so I painted these up without reference to the Plague faction I painted a while ago (I since remembered I had pictures here on the blog, d'oh). The flesh was a base coat of Vallejo Game Colour Rotting Flesh with highlights made by mixing VGC Livery Green to Rotting Flesh. I felt it lacked depth so gave it a wash of very watered down VGC Heavy Khaki, then reset the highlights. The bony plates were VGC Khaki (the ordinary khaki this time), highlighted with VGC Bonewhite then Off White. The trousers were a simple base colour and highlight with a wash of Army Painter Strong Tone. The whole mini was then washed with Army Painter Soft Tone
I'm very happy with the results, but they don't really match my Stage 3s. It doesn't really matter of course.
One of each pose has orange trousers (prisoners from Perestia?) While the others have green. The crouching victim has some sort of display pad on his belt. It's just like the one that one of the Lab Technicians has. I was initially tempted to paint this model as an infected technician, but in the end I went with matching the other model, but there is a flat line output on the display.

I've realised that I haven't actually shown the Corporation Marines before, so here they are.



They were painted with a black undercoat, then the hard 'shell' armour was drybrushed with Vallejo Game Colour Charcoal, then lighter drybrushes adding VGC Sombre Grey. The webbing and pouches were given a black wash.
The fabric was basecoated VGC Gory Red and highlighted Bloody Red.



Saturday, 4 April 2020

15mm Kings of War, the Ogre Army

As I mentioned previously, I'm taking a short break from painting ogres and red goblins, but I thought it might be nice to show the whole of the army as it currently stands.



Of course I have plans to expand it. More Warriors, both with shields and with great weapons. More Berserker Braves. More missile troops, I've enough plastic blunderbusses for another regiment of Boomers, and I'd like to do more Shooters, though I'll probably use the Naiad harpoon gun rather than crossbows.

I've some ideas for conversions for Hunters, and a slightly different take on Chariots. The giant needs re-basing as he is now a Titan, or I might paint up a bigger giant, I've got a suitable old GW one somewhere. And there's always more Red Goblins.

I'm gonna need a bigger box.

If you want to follow my blogs about the ogres, you can find the post talking about the initial idea here, the first lot of painted minis are here.  The next lot of minis are here, and further reinforcements here. The Ogre Siegebreakers are here, the Army Standard is here, and the final lot are here.

Friday, 3 April 2020

15mm Kings of War Ogres, yet more progress

I've been working away steadily on this army and I've another two heroes, a horde and a regiment to show.

Firstly the heroes.




A Sergeant, very useful for Inspiring, and no slouch in melee either. I tend to use a sergeant to lead in small battles, but until now I've had to field the Warlord mini.

He is from the second set of Caesar 20mm Orcs, and is meant to be a character as there are only two in the set. I added a greenstuff shield made using a press mold as I did for the second horde of Warriors here.




Now a Boomer Sergeant. I was experimenting with how to do Boomers, so a single mini seemed a good idea. The original mini was an archer from the second set, the same mini I used here as a Sergeant with Heavy Crossbow. After removing the bow and arrow I used the rifle from a Mantic dwarf Ironwatch. Looking at it I felt it didn't look like something that would dish out 4 attacks, so I dug out some old GW Empire Militia sprues and cut the end off the blunderbuss, swapping it for the end of the rifle. Now I think it looks the part.

His companion Red Goblin Powder Monkey was originally a Ral Partha Demonworld goblin archer. The bow was removed and the hand drilled to take a length of wire to act as a ramrod. The right arm was nicely posed to rest on a wooden barrel (an 'N gauge' model railway piece from Knightwing) and the quiver was trimmed and covered in greenstuff to make a bag. I'm very pleased with this piece, though I note from the photo that I need to dot in the goblin's eyes and teeth.

And here are some more units for them to lead


More Berserker Braves, mostly because I have loads of the minis and my regular opponent, Merlin, really enjoys watching them chew through his goblins (usually).



The second regiment of Berserker Braves.



A regiment of Boomers.

As I mentioned, I've been looking at ways to model these. The base minis are the two archers from the first set of orcs, just as I used for the Shooters here. Again I used the militia blunderbuss, but this time I used the whole thing, carefully carving off the hands holding it. The bare-chested mini is reaching back to draw an arrow from a quiver. I cut the feathers off so it could be a ramrod and altered the quiver shape with greenstuff so it became an ammo bag.


Here's the Ogre army neatly packed away in a Really Useful Box. There's getting on for 3000 points there, depending on artefacts and spells etc, and I think it's actually a legal army.

I'm putting them to one side now. I'll return to them soon, I'm sure (I have some more Red Goblins on the way, taking advantage of the Ral Partha sale), but I want an empty box for a new project. More on that when I've got something to show.

Wednesday, 1 April 2020

Star Saga Chovar

I'm still working my way through the Star Saga minis, and here's the Chovar.
It's a nice mini, if a little 'flat'. I wish now that I'd used the hot water method to repose some of the tentacles, but I'll not risk the the paint doing it at this late stage. Perhaps if I were to paint another?



I'm happy with how the mini turned out, but at the time I found it a bit of a chore to paint. I think this was because I had no mental picture of how I wanted it to look, and the various cables or tubes and other 'stuff' that keep the poor thing imprisoned baffled me.

I can use the Chovar as a Deadzone mini as well. Multiple use, which is good.

I'm now close to finishing painting Star Saga. I've some of the furniture still to do, and all the doors. Once I've finished basing the rest of the minis, I'll get a post up about them.

15mm Kings of War Ogre Army Standard

I've just finished an Army Standard for my ogres. I've actually had him painted for some time, but I didn't like the actual banner. The original banner was quite small, and hung perpendicular to the pole, despite the pole being held at an angle. It just looked wrong.

I've finally got round to replacing the top of the pole with a new one made of copper wire and a banner made from wine bottle foil.

I wanted a design that suggested a successful and fairly cultured mercenary company rather than a rag tag bunch of savages. After sketching several designs I decided on an axe, since many of the warriors carry them, on a red field, echoing their skin colour, with gold coins around the axe. I added some battle honours as well.

The new banner hanging properly.


I'm getting very close to finishing the ogres for the time being. I've still got some heroes to finish the basing on, and I've another horde and a regiment nearly done too.

Once I've got the ogres done I have another small scale project planned, more about that another time.

Friday, 20 March 2020

Star Saga Terminals

I've been steadily plodding through the Star Saga stuff and have just about finished the minis. I've nearly finished the Rangers, they are just waiting for their clear bases, and the Plague Victims are well on the way. In fact only the Plague Abomination still has no paint on it yet. But none of these are ready to show yet, so here's something else from Star Saga.

I moved the terminals ahead in the painting queue as in one of the missions they have specific letters to identify them and I thought it would be easiest to include the letters on the actual terminals.


 


There's not a lot to say about these. The off white was a base coat of Vallejo Wolf Grey with white highlights. The whole lot was given a wash with Vallejo Grey Wash. The screens were painted a mix of dark green and black (I tried both green and black and neither looked quite right). The displays were simply semi-random markings using Vallejo Glacier Blue, making sure a different letter was obvious one each screen. 

They were rather fun to paint, possibly as they were quite different from the 15mm Ogres and the Mordor minis I have been painting recently (another advantage of the five box system, I'm giving myself permission to change projects without feeling I'm abandoning something).


Tuesday, 3 March 2020

Kings of War, More 15mm Ogres

I've been steadily increasing my 15mm Ogre army for Kings of War. My motivation is the campaign that Merlin and I are playing. For the next battle my Ogres are assaulting his Goblins who are holed up in a stockade. I thought a unit of Siegebreakers would be ideal for this, so set about making some.


Unfortunately, one of the Red Goblins has been adding his own 'artistic touches' to the shields.


The Siegebreakers were a mix of minis from the two orc sets, indeed I have used one pose in the warriors with two handed weapons unit. I gave each ogre a more impressive weapon, using hammer heads from Mantic's dwarf Shieldbreakers. The big shields were made from thin plastic from Renedra bases with a wood grain scratched on the back and a hole drilled for where a handle would be. I used half round plastic beads from a craft shop for the shield bosses.
Two of the ogres are holding their hammers two handed, so I used goblins with spears to prop up their shields.
I had thought about painting some sort of symbol on the shields, but I couldn't think what design to use. The large black shields look rather plain, so I added a red goblin graffiti artist and some of his work to one of the units.

I've also done another hero, this time with a heavy crossbow. The crossbow is taken from Mantic's naiads sprue, and I think I might replace the unit I have already done with similar weapons.




I have now done, or have in progress, most of the different ogre units.

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