The Freaks Come Out at Night...

So, here we have another army that I've never played with, and probably never will... My 7th Edition Warhammer Fantasy Battle Night Goblins... Sans 2 Shamans that have gone and hid under a mushroom somewhere...

I realize that I have way more interest in painting armies these days that playing most games.

And... like most things I'm involved in, this army was done on the cheap;

I got the Giant as some sort of prize in a tournament when that box first came out a few years ago

The 2 spear chukkas, the fanatics, and the wolves were picked up in trades.

All the infantry is BFSP, and hence, very cheap.

The snotling pumpwagon was an Ebay purchase that needed to get dripped and stripped.

I think that the only thing that I actually purchased at a retail outlet for this army, was the Big Boss on the Giant squig, which is a really fun model to paint.

Now that I've got it done, I've decided that I don't really want to learn 8th edition fantasy, so I'm going to sell it... On to new armies.... Currently being worked on are several epic armageddon forces, Dark Eldar (which is soon to be my only remaining 40k army), and a sci-fi skirmish game called Wreck Age that me and my friend Matt have been working on. (shameless self promotion).

I really would have loved to do one of these goblins in a wide brimmed hat, and maybe another one break dancing... Maybe next time!

Discos don't open till after dark
And it ain't till twelve till the party really starts
And I always had to be home by ten
Right before the fun was about to begin
Crowds of people lined up inside and out
Just one reason, to rock the house
But in the day time the streets was clear
You couldn't find a good freak anywhere, 'cause

The freaks come out at night
The freaks come out at night

Skaven (Sneak Peek)

Eric has been doing it, so I will too. Here are some plague monks in-progress.

When I decided to start my Skaven army this year, I pulled out my old models. I found these four primed and ready to paint, so I couldn't resist slapping some paint on them.

Each one was painted a little differently, but the overall result is the same. I started with a light base coat (Rotting Flesh) and built on that with a series of washes and some dry-brushing.

This is a departure from my recent work with blending and a return to my older technique of dry brushing and washing. The reason I stopped dry brushing and washing was that I thought the results were too sloppy. However, that actually works to my advantage with skaven (and most importantly, it's faster).

Also, whereas my work with my daemons has been very colorful, these are going to muted and almost monochromatic. I'll spend some extra time on front rank and character models, of course.

Really Old Plague Monks and an Odd Coincidence

Did someone say Warhammer Fantasy? (Actually, Nick and Anton did)

I painted these skaven miniatures around 1997 when I was starting in WHFB. Back then, there were almost no plastics for Skaven. Needless to say, the difficulty of collecting a horde army of only metal miniatures took it's toll and the army was never completed.

When the multi-part plastic skaven came out a short time later, I hated them. Plus the 6th Edition focused a lot more on Clan Skryre rather than my favorite clan, Clan Pestilens.

I lost interest in WHFB after that. I worked briefly on a Goblin wolf rider army, but have focused mostly on 40K since then.

However, when I saw the new Skaven minis, I knew that I would very likely get drawn back into Fantasy.

Luckily, I kept most of my old skaven. Unfortunately, most of them are still buried deep in storage. I did find these plague monks, so I figured I'd take them out for a photo session.



Pretty much every one of these was a test mini. I couldn't really decide on a paint scheme. These minis will probably now get a bath in Simple Green and a new sickly green paint job.



And this is funny...



Above is the Sorcerer that I built for my Thousand Sons army about two years ago (and no, it's still not painted)

Below, is the brand new Games Day mini for 2010.



I'll leave you to make you own assumptions.

You're kidding me, right? the contest model is a dwarf?

Ok, so I'm racist...

I hate dwarves.

They are dumb, slow, dumpy, and drink too much beer. I never in a million years thought I'd be spending upwards of 10 hours painting one... One of the local GW stores was having a painting contest, and were giving away an undisclosed model, which you then had a week to paint up. Entering the contest gave you a raffle ticket to win a free painted army, and the winner would get free product.

I walked in to get the model, (and picked up some defense lines that I want to use for an arbites precinct that is shaping up) and found out, to my chagrin, that it was a limited edition dwarf champion... for falk's sake... seriously???

I almost said: "thanks, but no thanks", but I figured it was worth a shot, and nothing was going to be more testing of my abilities and focus than trying to paint up something so silly looking as a gigantic beard on legs.

I knew that I would have to do something to make it more fun, so I decided to turn it into a project incorporating something I could relate to... goblins!

Since it was a contest model revolving around a dwarf, I decided that I should probably NOT have the dwarf getting chopped in half, although I will admit, I was very tempted...

I took an older edition herder model, and hacked up the arms, and put a newer night goblin shield and sword on it... There was excessive building up for the arm and blood/entrails/guts... I didn't get a great shot of the goblin from the front when taking the pictures, but I think that for one of my first real sculpts, the arm came out pretty decently... Up until this point, I had only used 2 part modeling epoxy for fixing holes, and smoothing out joints/etc.

I took a couple of in progress pictures, and then a couple of the finished project. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, and I can say that I have completed something I never thought I would ever work on... a dwarf champion.

Enjoy!

p.s. oh, I won a core box of my choice, but I didn't win the raffle, which was... guess what?

A dwarf army.

Not winning that prize has never felt better!

preliminary work on the gobbo

blood and guts

the finished product

Second Facelift in 15 Years

Usually, whenever I take a long break from painting I usually return to the Angels of Absolution. They are my main army and since I work on them piecemeal I can get back up to speed on a set of legs or a shoulder pad - something where I can put a lot of focus into getting things right on what is really only a small part of the whole. For some reason, I wasn't feeling coming back to the Angels, or even the Orks or Redemptors of Golinar (Imperial Guard). Instead I decided to go back my roots.

I originally cut my teeth in the Games Workshop hobby on an Undead army. This was back in 1994 when there were no Tomb Kings or Vampire Counts, there was just a book titled Warhammer Armies: Undead. I assembled and painted a full 2000 point army in no time at all. I was working at my gaming store, Adventures Unleashed, buying everything at cost, and painting through every day I worked (when I wasn't playing that is!)

One of the things that led me to choose the Undead beside the fact that skeletons and zombies are cool as hell, was that WA: Undead had a step by step on how to paint a skeleton. I knew I wasn't going to do this hobby without painting my models and this was a huge bonus. Plus, the instructions were easy as hell: 1) Prime white. 2) Cover the entire model in Brown Ink. 3) Dry brush Bubonic Brown. 4) Dry brush Bleached Bone. 5) Done.

The earliest skeletons looked something like this guy who never got a facelift:

Not only was this model's base the standard Goblin Green, but it also had that really fuzzy light green flock originally that I eventually went back and coated in Goblin Green and dry brushed with shades of yellow because the fuzzy flock would all rub off.

In the late 90's the minds at Games Workshop decided that the Undead army was way to vast and varied. My army had Skeleton Chariots and Horsemen alongside Zombies, Ghouls, Vampires, Ghosts, Wights, Wraiths, Skull Chuckers, Necromancers, and Bat Swarms - and I didn't even have everything available in the army list. So GW dropped a Tomb Kings of Khemri army list into White Dwarf magazine separating the "dry" Undead from the "wet" Undead. One of the characteristic changes that they had just started to experiment with in conjunction with the release of Gorkamorka were brown desert bases. The vast majority of my army was based around skeletons of all sorts so I decided to join the dry team and did a major facelift. Thence forward my skeletons all looked like this model:
Sick mold lines and sweet shield design eh? When I got into the hobby those types of shields were in vogue and originally I never cleaned mold lines. I was never a model guy previous and just didn't know to do it. Eventually I got clued in, but I am pretty positive the vast majority of this army still has all the mold lines and that's something I'm not going back to try and fix. My Tomb Kings have remained in this state for the next 10 years until now. I actually only have half of my Tomb Kings in my display case in the living room (should I be admitting that my models are on display in the living room?) because of unfinished or embarrassing details like the above model's shield. I'm also extremely dismissive of my Tomb Kings because they are almost entirely dry brushed and I am an admitted hobby snob. So only this small selection of models sit in the case:

In the last week I got inspired to drag out the Tomb Kings and give them some love. Part of it was announcement of Adepticon Registration and the inclusion of a Warhammer Warbands event this year, and part of it was just the desire to get a finished army into the display case for the 1st time since the mid 90's when my Undead army filled the display case at Adventures Unleashed. One of my first orders of business was to redo the shields on an entire unit of 25 skeletons with hand weapons. Those red skull insignia shields had to go and this design was based on some Egyptian design I thought I remember seeing in a Warhammer Ancients book that I always thought was kind of cool. Other upgrades are in process as well. I figure in a couple of weeks I'll have a full army in the case that I'm semi-proud of despite the dry brushing and mold lines. I'll likely have to build a few more models to get the army up to 2000 points again, but I still have tons of skeletons, horsemen, and even a few chariots from the early 90's lingering around. Bulking the army out will not be an issue.
I painted over the center of the shield with Bestial Brown. Then in consistent strokes in the same direction did a couple of layers of Bleached Bone and then Skull White to create a streaky dirty white effect. I then used a Brown Wash around the perimeter. A final succession of Skull White streaks was done over lapping some into the Brown Wash. Large Chaos Black splotches were added and these were streaked with Chaos Black mixed with a tiny bit of Skull White (Adeptus Battle Grey or Codex Grey would be fine). Finally some random Brown Wash was added to dirty things up a little more. It sounds like a lot of steps but goes remarkably quick since its really just slopping paint on. Here's one last shot of where I'm at:

Expect more updates in the coming week.