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.

New Year 2022 odds and sods

 Goodbye 2021, hello 2022. (And bugger you ‘22 for bringing along a sodding beginning of the year head cold!) 

No end of year round up here, I pretty much bumbled along and managed to get up 24 posts - not bad for a year’s worth. My only pledges are to try to get up more posts than that for this year, buy fewer minis and paint more to reduce the Dreaded Lead&Plastic Mountain (And in turn complete a project or two). Should be simple enough, right?

On to the pics! 

A bit of painting done recently. Strayed a little from the Burrows and Badgers kick I have most recently been enjoying and so a mixed bag to show off today. 

First off a late 90’s (I think) Games Workshop offering, this is a Necromunda Ratakins gang Shaman. My very good friend Derek gifted me a small collection of the original Necromunda minis a while back and I got the bug to slap some paint on this fellow last weekend. I thought he’d be pretty straight forward but bow was I wrong… so many (in a typical GW fashion) sculpted details to pick out! Took me ages. Still, the finished effort will work and gives me a place to start off with for the rest of the Ratskin figs in my collection.

I felt a pale skin colour was more logical and less cheesy than the American Indian style studio paint job. The denizens of the Underhives don’t get to see the light, so it doesn’t make sense at all to me that anyone would have tanned skin in those areas with false light and polluted time-and-again-refiltered air. 

With so many sculpted details to pick out, I didn’t have the energy to try to add previously planned tattoos. Seriously, painting this guy was exhausting! 

Second in line is another Burrows and Badgers miniature, the third Holy Mouse I mentioned in my last post, Sister Tomasina. Like her brothers (Both in the cloth and by blood - see last post), she helps maintain and protect the church. Her Holy magics are as potent as her quick temper, woe betide the brigand attempting to thieve from the church coffers!

A grey nun’s habit with white veil. Pretty standard really. I also have her the same green holy book as I’d done for my Mole. I’ll get a pic of her with her brothers together done soon. 

Kept the pages of the book simple. No extravagant lettering , just simple script effects. Works for me.

Appropriate gratuitous mouse bootie shot. Wait! She’s a mouse-woman of the cloth! I’ll burn in hell for typing that…

Last off the paint station is a mini from a long neglected project. After seeing all sorts of great Dark Ages blogposts I decided to grab a couple of my Jomsvikings minis out and get  them done. Well, I only managed to finish one, the other should be finished before the end of the week. It’s a Gripping Beast metal sculpt from their Saga line. I think the official paint job has the animal pelt painted as a wolf, but it looks too small to be a wolf’s pelt so I decided to paint it up as a Scandinavian Red Fox fur instead. 

This one had more detail sculpted into him than the average Gripping Beast metal sculpt that I’m familiar with. Took a bit to get him done but I feel for a rank and file Bondi he looks good enough.

This pic doesn’t show it well but there are at least four layers of shading in all that orange. The lighting messed it up. 

That’s it for now. These three were part of the Paint What You Got challenge ran by Dave Stone on his blog. Not a specific challenge like others I’ve joined, more a “get stuff off your unpainted mountain with the rest of us” effort, which works just fine for me. :)

Hope all are well and safe out there,

- Dai

Green Meanie

Sunday saw the end of my 7-day break from work. Most of that time was taken up dog sitting for 5 raucous and annoying dogs, so not at all restful. But! As my previous 3 or so posts have shown, I've had a bit of time to work on my unpainted mountain, so not all bad, eh?

So to the subject of this post's title, after seeing Dave's own painted Space Ork on his Blog, I was suddenly inspired to (finally, I've only had this mini for almost 20 years or something) get this big bugger off my unpainted mountain as a palette cleanser type effort. He's an older metal Games Workshop Space Ork Nob (A larger, leader variant of the violent alien species). I'd originally picked him up to join as a mercenary-type character for one of my Rogue Trader teams for an old INQ28 project. Now, strictly speaking, the typical merc within the Ork faction are of the honourless Blood Axes Clan, but this fellow didn't fit the "Blood Axes" aesthetic, nor (My personal favs) from the Evil Sunz, so I painted him up to be from the Goff Clan. So black with black and white chequers. He had a lot of detail, so it took a LONG time to get him done, but looking at the finished result, I'm pretty happy how he turned out. No idea when or if he'll ever see time on the game table, but I'm glad he's finished.

Ridiculously huge weapons make for a comical figure. I decided that the little pet (A Squigg) on his banner pole should be a garish colour to contrast well with the otherwise dull rusty metals and dark skin and black clothing. The sculpt does have eyes under that helmet, but they were so damned small I felt that if you were peering that close to look at them then you can paint the flippin things in.

                                                 

Curious place for piercings.

Not the back banner he was supplied with (No idea where that went.), luckily had a selection of plastic options as a replacement and this one was the most fun I think.

I cheated a bit with the chequers, using a very fine Micron pen to draw the lines, then filled with paint. End result after a quick gunmetal sponge are some "good enough" pauldrons!

Those big arms should have been pinned, but I had to paint him in pieces, so I hope the Gorilla Glue holds!

Lastly, I also got this simple resin effort off the table - named a "Water Container" and from the now OOP Warlord Games "Project Z" range. I've seen these things in real life on the farms where my in laws live, but they are used for chemicals and not water, but whatever. I based it's colour scheme off one of those though, with a little murky looking wash in the recesses as though it's been left out and alone for a while. It'll feature as a small scatter terrain piece for my Zombie Outbreak project game.

Not sure what'll be next as I feel a small break from the paint desk is required. (My back says "THANK YOU!".)

Hope all are continuing to stay safe out there,

- Dai

Bullocks (Part 2 - Done!)

Couple posts ago I showed of an old minotaur mini kindly donated to me by Iain over at caveadsum1471 blog. Well, here's his pal. Bit more of a shaven look, which is fine for me and I think they look like a great pair. Speaking of pairs, he also got some balls added to match his friend. Both are impressive and were they not so ugly and smelly, I'm sure they'd be a hit down the local bovine bar.

The contrast is pretty crazy in these pics but he was another quick'n'dirty paint job and I like the mini very much. THANKS IAIN!

Think these two will feature in lots of future roleplay sessions where I GM and also in an old school Chaos warband I am putting together.

Next up, more Chaos Genestealer Cult!

Bullocks (Part 1)

Some time back, a very lovely surprise parcel arrived at my home from a kind fellow blogger by the name of Iain. (His blog is very spiffy with some lovely armies and terrain to drool over HERE) Inside I found two old Marauder Miniatures Minotaur sculpts circa 1990 that I had owned when I was but a young teen and they were first released, but sadly since lost in the annals of time and girls and booze. Iain heard my sob story after he posted his own painted versions and sent me a spare pair of these lovely bovine warriors. Below, you'll see only one of the two painted up, the 2nd to be previewed at a later date.

Now I love these old cartoony style sculpts. Per usual, they have lots of character and this fellow looks like one heck of a thick-headed brute to me. My only complaint is that as part bull, wouldn't he be sporting a lovely pair of knackers betwixt his legs like real bulls do? Of course he should! So yeah, I green-stuffed some testicles on the bloke and made sure they were appropriately visible. (Added the same to his soon to be shown pal as well.)

Yet to name him, but if you can come up with something appropriate, fire away int he comments!

A simple paintjob to just get him off my desk. It'll do for Tabletop and Roleplay games!

Guess they don't make comfortable undies large enough to contain his manliness?

Also, I found myself entertaining a little insanity and decided that starting a new Warhammer 40K army would be a great idea! So, I assembled these two and now have the start of a burgeoning Genestealer Cult army! 

Wait, are these Xenos freaks sporting Icons dedicating them to the Chaos god, Khorne!? (More on this in a future post)

This puppy just loves everyone!

Wowzers! Over a month since my last post!

Well, hobby mojo was next to dead so didn't feel like painting at all after my trip back home to the UK. Until this week, that is.

So here i present you some of the stuff that I can show off from the paint station:

Actually just finished this current model by Games Workshop of a Beast of Nurgle. It was a pain to put together as a kit, but the finished model looks pretty good (if one picks the least cartoony options.).

Painting took a few lengthy sessions and i had lots of time to get stuck in yesterday and today seeing as I've been home looking after a feverish 13-year-old.

What i painted originally to get me back in the mood are as follows. Just simple contemporary zombies and some 3D printed scatter terrain pieces. Nothing fancy, but a nice reintroduction to painting.

I like to call 2nd from left "Pegs"

Next up? Well, I've got some Badgers and Burrows minis on the desk and maybe just maybe I'll work some more on those poor unloved Winter Germans, or, heaven forbid I remember to get back to the commissions i should have finished an age ago!?

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.