Muslog the Mutant

Here is another single mini post. Not that I haven’t been painting any new stuff, but I have not had the time to get my act together and take pictures of the stuff I have been working on recently. It is mostly fantasy minis, as I am prepping for a WFB scenario we are playing at the end of this month.

But down to business. Here we have an odd mutie. I am not sure who sculpted or produced it, but I guess that he is intended as some sort of fantasy football player in the Blood Bowl-vein. Let me know if you can identify him for me.

However, in my world he is now serving as a sad mutant bandit. I gave him a quick conversion and armed him with the chainsword, thus making him quite fierce in close combat as he fights with the armour and sword as well as the quirky flipper-like tentacle.

The sculpting is by no means a masterpiece, but I quite like him and I think he will serve nicely in the Rogue Trader campaign we are embarking on very soon, but more about that in a future post.

Thanks for stepping by

– Martin

The Maggie Clan

As I mentioned in my last post we played a little Rogue Trader scenario some weeks ago where a band of human and gretchen bandits attacked the Maggie farm – a grim place known and feared for the brutal Maggie clan living there. Desperate times demand desperate actions and the bandits attempted unsuccessfully to steal the reptile cattle belonging to the Maggies. This was unwise, the bandits never made it away from the farm, and Pa Nesbit Maggie could afterwards add a few further notches to his belt.

What you see here is more or less the whole Maggie clan – the only one missing is Puma, the foul tempered hound living on the farm, as well as a farmhand I forgot to put in the picture. You will note Pa Angel and Junior Angel from Citadel’s Judge Dredd line in the front row along with Judge Child in the background. You will also see a further perp from the Judge Dredd range in the back row; a mini which is identical to the Pa Angel miniature except for the head. In the front row you also see the Asian cook from the Citadel Villagers and Townsfolk range. I gave Lu-Fu, as he is called on Maggie’s farm, a lasgun and thus made him one of the best armed in the clan. Finally you also see the farm robot L7. I have no idea who produced this chap but I caught him on Ebay about a year ago for next to nothing. The stupid grin on the robot is perhaps a bit too much but I could not resist the retro look and still quite like the model.

As you see I had to paint the Angel gangers more or less true to their 2000AD look. This is, I’m afraid, rather unimaginative but especially painting Pa Angel was fun and challenging. I would never have come up with a yellow and red striped shirt myself.

That’s all for now.

Cheers
Martin

 

Come my fanatics…

A few weeks ago Mr. Phreedh hosted a small game of Rogue Trader and I needed some pilgrims for the game. While prepping for the event I went through my lead mountain to find appropriate minis and came across some unpainted “Angry Saxon Monks” from Gripping Beast. I painted a lot of those some years ago for a fantasy scenario and it struck me that the rest would serve nicely as angry space pilgrims.

Being a bit pressed for time I gave them some very rough-and-ready conversions and painted the lot as some sort of weird cultists dedicated to the concept of the “Big Sleep” who are always on the lookout for new drugs to put them in touch with their notion of divine trance. Hopefully we will see a battle report on the game someday (nudge-nugde).

The guy in the middle is not from Gripping Beast. He came from a job lot on Ebay. I’m not sure who produced this monk or cultists.

I also included one picture from the game for you to see the ornaments on the back of the pilgrims which I forgot to photograph.

Any thoughts?

Cheers

Martin

Introducing the Dolgans

I wrote in my last post that I have been preparing some minis for the old Dolgan Riaders-scenario from Citadel Journal for this year’s Hoisont Con. The con is now passed but before I show you how it all went down I want to do a few posts about the minis and the scenario first.

As you probably know the scenario describes the attack on a hobgoblin caravan by the tribe of Dolgans. And what you see here is basically the Dolgan tribe constituted more or less by fierce nomad warriors as well as the centaur Maramseth.

The Dolgans are led by Ivan. The scenario model is rather fun – a barbarian with the hair somewhere between Joey Ramone and Buzz Osborne clad in a short breastplate stopping just above his navel and G-string underwear.  Note also the quite elaborate scabbard.

The second in command among the Dolgans is Terek. I used my Pan Tang Tiger Handler as Terek which seems fitting as Terek leads five war hounds into battle. For the Horisont game I used my Hobhounds as the dogs to add a little flavor and exoticism to the game.  I have the old scenario model but did not have the time to pant him in time as I had to finish the two units of bloody tribesmen you can see below.

Two champions also accompany the Dolgans on their raid. Firstly there is Stephan. A spectacular miniature with patriarchal looks. The mini is quite large and I really grew fond of it while painting the ol’ chap. He’s clearly one of my favorites from this whole scenario. The thing about Stephan is that he is a Were Bison or Were Bull, as I interpreted it for the sake of convenience. In order to represent his bull-form I used an old Prince August Minotaur. The mini is small compared to what you normally see when it comes to a Minotaur and it has been left unpainted in my lead mountain for quite some years now. But I think he fits the bill perfectly as the beast form of Stephan. In order to tie the two models together I gave the Minotaur a sword.

The second Dolgan champion is Yuri – another splendid miniature that frankly reeks of the old comic book version of Conan.

 

Then we arrive at The Storyteller – the shaman and spell caster of the tribe. I have been trying to get hold of the scenario model for some time now without any luck. He’ll probably show up some day but until then this cleric, quaintly called Mao Living-Mo in the Citadel universe of named models, is my Storyteller. A fun little fella which grew on me while painting it; as he lacks a name in the scenario I have called him Kepek.

To this we then can add Maramseth the Centuar – the close friend of the Dolgans. I’m not sure what miniature came with the scenario pack. At least I don’t remember seeing any centaur looking like the cut-out token which comes along with the scenario in Citadel Journal. Perhaps some of the Citadel scholars could elucidate on this? I used the Talisman Centaur as Maramseth. A classic sculpt. It was important to me that he should not look like a chaos centaur.

 

Finally we have the two units of Dolgan troops. One unit armed with hand weapons – in this case spears – and the other unit armed with short bows. The Dolgan tribe and indeed the whole concept of nomadic tribes roaming the Northern Wastes clearly takes a lot of inspiration from the Mongols which we already see in the drawing accompanying the text about these tribes in the Bestiary from Warhammer Fantasy Battle 2ed.

To represent the Dolgans I chose to use Mongol warriors from Old Glory Miniatures. They are crude, came with huge amounts of flash and mold lines and are a bit on the small side when compared to their Citadel kinsmen. However, I like their look and once painted it all came together nicely.

And speaking of painting – these two units were speed painted at frantic pace during the last week before the con. I absolutely hate to speed paint miniatures and I hate to paint more the five models of the same kind in a row. It was in other words a rather tiresome and frustrating experience to finish these 40 Dolgans, but once done I could sort of look at them with a sense of achievement.

Almost all together

I my next post I’ll introduce the hobgoblins and their caravan.

Cheers

Martin   

 

         

      

 

Severed Hand Personalities

https://wordpress.com/It’s been a while since I posted anything on the blog. It’s not that I haven’t been painting rather the opportunities for taking pictures (I haven’t advanced beyond using natural lighting yet) and finding time to actually write the posts have been limited lately. Life you know… Well, what I have been doing is painting stuff for and from the legendary Orc’s Drift campaign from 1985 for Warhammer Fantasy Battle 2ed – the first large campaign-box Games workshop produced – which you of course all know.

What you see here is the orc characters for the second scenario “Ashak Rise”. First we have my take on Hagar Sheol – the leader of The Severed Hand Tribe. I was debating myself for some time what to do with this character as it gradually dawned on me that I probably would not be able to lay my hands on the original scenario model anytime soon.

The Hagar Sheol scenario model. A rare and expensive Little chap

Thus I started looking for a replacement. However, once I accepted that I would not be able to use the original I thought why not try to make my own Hagar. So that’s what I did. I rummaged through my pile of unpainted orcs and found a suitable model to convert and set out to make the model resemble Gary Chalk’s fine, fine portrait of Hagar on the cover of the Orc’s Drift scenario booklet. I must say that it was an extremely fun project, but the collector-part of my brain is still nagging me and I’ll probably never be complete at ease before I tracked the original Hagar down. Nevertheless I must admit that I’m very fond of my version.

Frontcover of the Orc’s Drift booklet with a drawing by Gary Chalk

The other orc is a ‘scenario model’ who goes under the name of Grashak Kra. A fierce, cool orc champion of the sort I love; punky, wild and wicked. He also appears outside the Orc’s Drift universe as an ordinary orc champion and is very easy to find and thus not expensive in any way.

That’s it for now. Stay tuned for more Orc’s Drift stuff coming up soon.

 

Cheers

Martin

Proud pygmies ready to attack

I finished this bunch of pygmies for the Horisont Con in Odense two weeks ago. A fun little project which gave me a chance to work with African skin tones – something I only rarely have attempted. The lighting when taking the photos more or less screwed up my blending on the skin, making it all more or less chocolate brown, but that’s not how they look when holding then in the hand. Believe me.

I know these pygmies are a slightly dodgy topic and surely totally politically uncorrected, but I take them in a pulpy vein like Vikings, medieval knights and such other stereotypes.

The miniatures you see are a mix of old Citadel pygmies from ’86 and pygmies from Kalistra (not sure when they were released). There is a marked difference in quality when comparing the Citadel ones to the ones from Kalistra, but they fit together nicely. This should come as no surprise, by the way, as many of Kalistra’s models quite obviously mimic vintage Citadel stuff. But, as said, they are much, much cruder in the sculpting. Nevertheless look fine once painted and they also come cheap, which the citadel stuff doesn’t.

The gorilla-riding pygmy is the warlord Tiki-tu on Mumu, the fierce and slightly evil ape. A conversion I had some fun working on. For Tiki-tu I used a damaged pygmy  shaman from Citadel and his mount is from Foundry.

 

Hopefully I’ll be able to return next time with some better pictures. The lighting conditions aren’t great any longer, but maybe I’ll be able to catch a few moments of sunshine during the week.

Cheers

Martin

 

 

The Five Chaos Centaurs of the Apocalypse

 

I’m nearly done with these five, jolly chaos centaurs. Well, sort of. The one with the bell still needs to be finished properly and then there’s of course their shield and the bases. However, they have been a tremendous fun to do, although they have required quite a lot of work.

First I of course had to do the conversions. The minis are more or less converted centaurs from Foundry bought at this year’s BOYL. Basically I had to “evil” them up and change their very serene, Antique look into something more chaotic in the old school way. If I succeeded is not me to judge, but the process was fun.

The colours were chosen rather randomly and they are painted with no particular chaos allegiance. I find myself a bit bored with the typical four choices of chaos at the moment. It feels like a restriction rather than an inspiration.

Anyhow, back to the workbench.

Cheers

 

 

WIP: In the Vale of the Small Jealous Gods, part 2

Two weeks ago I posted some WIP pictures of a chaos champion who is to star in the scenario ”In the Vale of the Small Jealous Gods”. An Oldhammer scenario Claus and I have decided to present at this year’s Horizon convention in Silkeborg in Novenber. There are still quite a lot of preparations to do for the scenario, but the first of four champions is now more or less finished. The base is, for instance, still needs to be done.

He still needs a name and proper background, but his chaos attributes are in place. This beautiful chap was thus blessed with a crown of toes (hidden beneath his helmet!), being very fast and having a huge head.  I have painted him in Nurgle-like colours but actually we haven’t decided on his allegiance yet.

I have also begun preparing the next champion. A chaos dwarf with the following two gifts:  resilient and a skull face. I had to amputate two thirds of his head to give him his skull face, but the result – although not completely finished – is quite successful. At least I achieved what I set out to do, which with my modeling skills counts as a succes! More about this little champ soon.

There’s still a lot of work to do and most of it will probably end up on this blog at some point.

 

WIP: A chaos champion with a huge head

Howdy. Here’s a little something I want to share with you. It’s a WIP I’m currently working on. A chaos champion randomly created through Orlygg’s “chaos bands made easy” post on his blog. Actually this chap was created very late in Stansted Airport while Claus and I were waiting for our plane, going back to Copenhagen from this year’s BOYL. I rolled the following attributes for this guy: 1: a “crown of toes” (!),2:  a “huge head” and 3: “very fast”. I tried to make the crown of toes work but it didn’t look right and “very fast” is hard to show. I thus ended up with this bobblehead of a champion. The conversion was wickedly fun to do and I’m really eager to get a go at the painting now. Actually he’s already undercoated white and drying while I write this.

He still lacks a name – more on this to come. In fact quite a lot more I think. He’s the first of four champions we created for a little Oldhammer scenario entitled “Vale of the Small Jealous Gods” which we will be running at the Horizon Convention in Silkeborg this November.

We’ll post more about the scenario soon and hopefully we’ll be able to get some of the other “oldhammerer” from Denmark or even the nearby countries to join us.

 

Baar the Moonfaced

I more or less finished this delightful mini this weekend. Actually I only need to clean up the transparent stick and that’s it. It’s for sure one of the weirder chaos models Citadel produced back in the day. I guess it’s one big homage to John Blanche and his wonderful recurring moonfaced characters. The miniature is packed with details and it took me ages to finish. It probably didn’t help that I ended up doing some conversions on him and went overboard on the base with all the greenstuff plants.

The amount of details was truly a challenge when it came to choosing the colours. Initially I had envisioned something different for him, a metallic, golden look actually. However, I couldn’t make it work and ended up with something traditional tzeentchian.

His name is Baar and I think he’ll jump on this disc and swing by the BOYL-event.