Some Citadel Classics and Other Bits

Until this week my hobby had been left idle. No painting, no construction, nothing. But the mojo strikes when it wants and I guess we are all slaves to that in one form or another.

There was no inspiration or direction for what was finished up for this post, just grabbing random stuff and basically being happy to get them off the unpainted mountain. We start off with these three fellows, a trio of old 80’s Citadel Miniatures. Lovely sculpts and all fun to paint. 

Up first is this Sea Elf. Originally he was the officer of an elven bolt thrower kit. Don’t ask me where the other crew member is or even the bolt thrower itself! Lost to the sands of time… I really like this simple sculpt and it’s decidedly leader-like pointy pose. I decided to make him look less “human” (His ears being covered up by his tall hat and all.) by giving him this decidedly cool grey-tones skin colour. 
 

“Sea Green” elfish dress thing was appropriate I think and the white armour parts like she’ll? No, eh, it’ll do.

Grey skin? That means black hair. Obvious, no?

This next chap is from the old Norse line of figures. Foundry picked these up and still produce most of them to this very day I believe. I think he’s supposed to be some sort of noble and looks the part with his fancy horse hair helmet plume, gold necklace and fur lined jacket.

I like this bloke, his face is all stoic and heroic. Painting his  eyes was a bugger tho as they are so flippin tiny!

This shield design was an off the cuff  effort, think it works out. 

The last of these figs is another from the Norse range who was also sold as a Barbarian too later on. I deliberately kept this paint job clean and simple after originally planning out some tattoos for all that skin. But no, laziness took over and he can stay pale and weird mullet-y. 

For such a naked (with He-Man underpants), he strangely had no nipples sculpted on. So I painted them on instead. I think this was a good choice. 

This terrain piece has been sat unpainted for years so I slapped on some base coats, wash and a simple highlight. Yet to get a coat of varnish, I think it’ll look great on the table. It’s a part of a Reaper Bones set that has a dragon and heroes fighting it and there was other parts to it but… no idea where those got to. 

Semi-naked berserker posing for scale

This second terrain piece is for some natural rough/ hard terrain and is Pretty much what it looks like - rocks and clump foliage glued to an old cd. But it’ll work for games and as these two warrior-models show, sometimes cheap homemade crap can work to.

Varnish coating also needs to be done on this.

Was thinking about adding some flock but I think it would make placing minis atop troublesome so stuck with dirt. 

Last for this post is a simple build pic. Luck was with me before Xmas as my wife’s friend ordered a mini for her husband but for some reason sent it to us instead. She said keep it and so I ended up with this nifty GW Lord of the Rings Eomer set. Put him together just last night and he really does look like Karl Urban’s effort from the films. No idea when I’ll get around to painting him and I’m definitely NOT starting a new army! (He’ll find use in my dnd games eventually)

Really liking the mounted and not versions. He also had helmet and spear options to build him with but my wife liked the helm less and sword versions better so I went with that.

80's Chaos Beastman

A swift post for another palette cleanser mini - one more long ignored old Citadel Miniatures Chaos Beastman.

I like this fellow cos he's all out of whack. Quite unlike my previously posted one, he's fuzzy all over and Bovine, rather than the typical Goat. One eye'd and only one hoof'd he strikes quite the "chaos-y" vibe. I wanted to give him some sort of pilfered-from-a-corpse look so painted his trousers up in the old colours of the olde Empire province of Ostermark. Seemed fitting that the same province that Mordheim was in should provide his attempt at a uniform of sorts.

Attempted a Chaos face on the shield that all the old minis seemed to have in White Dwarf. It's not awful, but it's certainly not great. 

Fuzzy like me.

I've also been putting together some more Objective markers, this time for Warhammer 40K and added a little more paint onto the remaining two objectives for my 28mm WW2 projects. But more on those in the next post.

Hope all are well and staying that way - Dai

Summer of Scenery Challenge (Part 1)

Been having some technical issues trying to get this post up, so apologies for the radio silence of late. Let's get on with the show, eh?


Dave over at the Wargmesculptor Blog announced he was starting a small challenge for any who wanted to sign up to get some or their scenery/terrain pieces built and painted in an effort to help get rid of our backlogs. So, I jumped in and decided I'd give it a go.

A Sarissa Precision mdf Helipad for my modern day zombies game that one day WILL be played, promise. Simple kit and even more simple paint job - will do for my table. Was inspired by the Left 4 Dead video games where the goal was to get to the helipad whilst fighting off masses of undead - best Zombie video games ever I feel.

A Mobile Office also in mdf by Sarissa Precision. Trickier to put together with those vertical struts, but looks good on the table. Same as the helipad, kept the paintjob very simple which also got it off my table swiftly. Thinking some day in the future to make a white board and find office furniture for the interior.

These two are a couple of Warhammer 40K ruins scatter pieces. Very simple drybrush paintjobs. I have another 7 or 8 pieces to go with these two recently primed. The Statue is from the now out of print Urban Conquest Warhammer 40K expansion and the ruins behind it are the last of the 3 piece also out of print Honoured Imperium scenic set that included the previously posted Statue and giant Aquila that I'd painted up.

These two small 28mm resin WW2 stockpiles can be used as either objectives or scatter terrain. They were a kind gift a long time ago from the estimable Stew (Click his name to see his very cool blog) after he ordered the Chain of Command rules and realized he had no intention of playing in 28mm! I have two others in the painting queue as well.

I tried to add a little interest with the poorly painted signs, but otherwise they are very simple paintjobs and based to be suitable for both winter or greener seasonal games.


Did you see the two Brit troops in that first pic? Yeah, I painted those up too. Here's some better pics.

These two are some more Commandos (Toting iconic Tommy guns) for my Dieppe Raid project. The helmeted chap I believe is by Blacktree and the kneeling Wargames Foundry. Both decent sculpts in their own rights. These two bring me up to 6 out of 8 done for my first squad. Lots still to go!

Last painted piece to show off is a small "Palette Cleanser" mini to help keep the mojo going. This chap is a Citadel Miniatures Beastman from 1980-something-or-rather. Had him since I were a young lad and he deserved to be painted up a long time before now but at least he's ready for... I dunno - not really sure how I'll use this one.

To finish up I also managed to stick together the last 10-man Brood Brothers squad for my Genestealer Cult and also a couple fun minis to make up a Rogue Trader and her retinue (Just for gits and shiggles really).

 Old 1980's Imperial Guard plastics mixed with more recent plastic Cadian bits and Genestealer Cult heads and nicknacks. Now I have three of these squads assembled, they just need some gap filling here and there and I can get to their basing so they can be primed.

Got the pistol toting Rogue Trader off a nice Ebay cheapie auction. Liked the character when they first showed her off from their first Blackstone Fortress expansion or something. The red chap to her right is an Adeptus Mechanicus trooper. I felt he'd make for a good right-hand-man. Those three primed-grey fellows in the rear are old 1980's Citadel Miniatures Chainsaw Warriors from a very much out-of-print game. They'll be her muscle I think.

And that's it - long post, but I guess that's what happens when one doesn't post for over a month (!!!). Stay healthy and safe out there!

Woof

Whilst painting has slowly been continuing on my Winter Soviets, I need to take a quick break from batch painting uniforms (Especially after the recent bunch of 15mm Confederates) and decided to jump on the Oldhammer bandwagon a bit.

These are some old minis I've had since my earliest days of gaming, some Citadel Miniatures Chaos Hounds and a Dark Elf Beast Handler. They were done pretty fast and dirty and being Chaos I wanted to make each very different from the other which made them a lot of fun to work on as well.

A small pack for sure, but loads of character!

 

This is Layla. She was a desperate human soul who plead for someone, anyone to come to her aid to help fight whichever horrible situation she was suffering and little did she realise, "someone" was listening. And transformed the pathetic wretch into a beast so that she might rend the flesh of her persecutors. 

Layla is supposed to look like a human who has been tainted by Chaos and forcefully transformed into a beast - her skin still carries the tattoo's she had during her human years.

This is Flameguts the Hellhound. I tried to make him look like he gathers unnatural demon fire from within and belches it out.

Hope the effect carries off okay. 

Lastly is Slather. Slather constantly leaks horrid smelling black-brown ichor from all of his orifices all the time and barely walks in straight lines. 

I have pictured his rear end to show the leakage there but the focus was off after review. :)

This is Dougal the Dark Elf. Bit of a git really and far too happy to lay about himself with that bloody great whip. 

Of course, everyone wants to see a Dark Elf bum. (I realised I forgot to paint the edges of his chainmail, so will sort that out later.)

The battle report for my previously mentioned Regimental Fire and Fury game will go up sometime this week. I think.

Ciao.

De[ad]cember

The end of the year is nigh....

Ominous eh?

Okay, maybe not. Goodbye 2015, hello 2016 - I turn 40 later this new year, now THAT is ominous!

My Kickstarter rewards from the last Red Box Games Kickstarter arrived along with a set of their lovely zombie models and I've been painting furiously during my week off (Which is now at an end, I go back to work once more on the morrow - another ominous moment.). This set of 9 undead are all individual sculpts and great ones too, which was great and all are on the gore-lite side of zombie, which was also somewhat refreshing, but also made for painting to be a quick and simple affair. I'm not really inclined to put amazing amounts of effort into low hitpoint badguys as they'll probably spend little time on the tabletop in my rpg, being so easy to kill! (again)

Group shot - lots of shambliness and minlessness about this lot. Which i like very much.

Really like these sculpts - far more creepy side of zombies captured in contrast with the typical goriness and violence that other manufacturers produce like say, Mantic or GW.

These are all seem best suited to a fantasy environment due to their attire seeming rather poor and peasant-like.

And all bald and incredibly scrawny, which indicates less violent deaths, and probably more virus/disease-based endings for these poor souls.

Now I think about it,  these zombies will also be perfect for use with the recently released Dragon Rampant (Currently on sale, cheap! Click the link to see details.) rules set by Osprey Publishing!!! (Their fantasy version of their awesome Medieval/Dark Ages skirmish rules set, Lion Rampant - also currently on sale, cheap!)

 Also got this crossbow wielding fellow finished for my Frostgrave project. He's a rather old Citadel Miniatures (I think) orc, with exquisite detail sculpted throughout I think. I've painted him up in my Hobgoblins scheme rather than a typical green due tot he fact that orcs in my settings are of the pig-faced variety.

Lovely determined expression on this one.

A pouch of bolts and a nice hand axe hanging from his belt. Thought the red grip on the axe contrasted well with the brown leathers and purple jerkin.

Sheepskin seemed the more believable choice for his furs - sheep are easier to "hunt" than wolves or bears.

Lastly and again for my Frostgrave project, I slapped some paint on this 1983 TSR warhound. A fun and very simple sculpt and I decided he'd be a Doberman. At least that was what I was going for.

Per-dullcote, so the grassy loose pieces are long cleaned.

And a little out of focus on the face in this one, the chainmail also looks more defined in real life.

Not sure I'll get in another post before the New Year comes around proper, though I am working on my final two character miniatures for my rpg campaign, which will allow me to commence running it in the next couple weeks or so! (I'll be sure to leave an account here if there's any interest.)

Happy New Year to you all - I hope hobby-wise, it's a fruitful and fun 366 days! (It being a Leap Year and all.)

- Dai