A Bit About The Current Situation

You may have noticed an increase in output recently. No surprise, like many I find I have a lot more free time. My hobby and my music are helping keep me sane (for a given value of sane).

There are other reasons as well though. I'm starting to get the hang of combining phone for photos and tablet for text, and as several projects near convenient pause points, I think I do have something to show.

It might get a little dull at home, but I have family who are front line workers, and it's obviously a nightmare for everyone working in that sector.

Stay safe everyone.

Lord of the Rings Nazgul

I've finished seven of the Games Workshop Nazgul on foot. Seven because that's all I can find at the moment*, though I should have more somewhere. These are all metal minis and were originally in the Attack On Weathertop set, along with the four Hobbits and a nice Strider mini with him swinging a lit torch.

Both of the Nazgul at each end of the line had broken sword blades, so I glued a short wire into a hole drilled into the stump that remained and then tried to sculpt a replacement blade. The resultant swords are a little thicker than they should be, and don't match, but I'm pleased to have got them to a useable state.

Seven of Nine

Painting black should be easy, but it took several goes to get to a point where I was happy with them. All these minis had been painted previously, but I wanted them to match, and the previous paint jobs weren't very good, many were chipped or scratched so I started afresh.

Here's how I painted them. A black undercoat followed by a base coat of a mix of Vallejo Game Colour Charcoal mixed with equal parts black. This was then drybrushed with the charcoal, then washed with black wash. Then it's a case of more drybrushing, with lighter highlights, and more washing. I gave the inner robes a dark brown wash before the final black wash to add some differentiation between the various layers of cloth. The final highlights were quiet light, especially around the hood to draw attention to the face (or lack of it). 

The swords, gauntlets and boots were painted as normal for aged metal.

I'm on the lookout for two more, ideally the ones I don't have duplicates of. Judging by the number of Witch King models I have, and the fact that I have some duplicates, I probably had two Attack on Weathertop sets, so I hope to find the missing Nazgul somewhere in the lead pile. I'll also keep an eye out at Wargames shows and on eBay, but a quick check suggests that it won't be cheap.

Games Workshop have done a newer set with nine different Nazgul, the five sculpts above and four new ones. These look nice, but I suspect I could only get them in resin. I also have the Witch King on foot with fancy helm and morning star from the time of the Battle of Pelennor Fields, which I'll paint up in a similar manner to the above someday.

I also have five Black Riders which I'll paint, hopefully I'll be able to bulk them out to nine at some point, I'll need them all for the Flight to the Ford of Bruinen.

If I want a big project, I've even got three of the Nazgul on Fellbeasts, two plastic models and one of the original metal ones.

You'll note I'm avoiding the 'characterised' Nazgul. There's no evidence for them in the source material and they don't fit my personal vision of Middle Earth.

*O.K. not quite true, I have a third copy of the model at either end of the line, with sword intact, but I didn't want three the same. He can go on eBay to offset some of the cost of the other two, if I can't find them.

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.

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.

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.

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.