Orcs with bow and arrow

OK, I admit it, this is not the most interesting blogpost ever, but in order to get the ball rolling on the blog again I will show you my output as it gradually is finished. Here we thus have two orcs, mostly done a while ago, but they somehow stranded when it came to the basing, which I finished a little more than a week ago.

What you see is one of Nick Lund’s gloomy orcs released by Grenadier. These orcs don’t match perfectly with late 80’s Citadel orcs but when put together, like here, the difference in size or scale is really not a big problem – at least to my mind. Ideally I would love to have a whole unit of Lund’s orcs to be used along with my citadel orcs, but this will probably never happen and I thus keep painting these aesthetically very different orcs and pool them into one big pile o’ green menace with my citadel ones.

The other orc is of course one of the troopers from the Regiments of Renown set ‘Harboth’s Orc Archers’, sculpted by Mr. Adams and released in ’87. These are some choice orc archers and I love the set. I never actually bought the regiment as a box, but over the years I think I have collected what would be the contents of the box. Based on the numbers of these orcs floating around on online auctions this set must really have been one of citadel’s bestsellers.

By the way, the shield on the back of this orc is also by Grenadier – at least the original is. Grenadier has used it on a number of 80’s evil fighter types and I nicked it via press mould and green stuff and gave the shield to this happy orc chap.

Up next I will present our new fantasy campaign.

Cheers

Martin

You should back this!

Terence Gunn has a book project running on Kickstarter. The book is a revision or 3^rd and final edition (Gunn tells us) of the volume The Fantastic Worlds of Grenadier and offers a chronological product history of Grenadier. Now that’s cool and something I would really like to see happen. You think so too? Then back this project – there’s only six days left to go and measly 800$ or so to make the project.

Now go visit the site immediately!

Cheers

Martin

 

The enthroned lich king again

I wrote about the enthroned lich king from Grenadier some weeks ago and now he is finished. The throne was missing some pieces, which had to be made, and during the process it dawned on me that there would be no room for the little, undead princess on the throne, next to the lich, despite the fact that this was where I had envisioned her. She thus ended up on a base of her own.

Both the throne and the princess are rather nice models although the sculpting is a bit dodgy in the details. In fact it in some places was hard to see what I was painting. But the over-all effect is quite good and the lich king certainly deserves a place as a centerpiece in some future confrontation.

Next up Tom Meir’s lizardmen.

Cheers

Martin

Problem solved!

By the help of the good people on the Lead Adventures Forum my ‘mystery piece’ is no longer a mystery. As it turns out it indeed is a Grenadier model, produced in ’87, for the Dragon Lords series of boxed sets. This one is entitled Encounter at Kohmar-Lolth. A great name isn’t it? Very Robert E. Howardian. The piece was sculpted by Andrew Chernak.

As I suspected two torches and even a crystal ball on a pedestal is missing from the throne. I’ll definitely have to try and make something similar once I get going at the model. As you can see from the picture below a lot of other stuff was also included in the original box, which apparently never made it into the collection I acquired last year.

I’m actually looking very much forward to get started on this model now. Keep an ey ut for the lich king of Kohmar-Lolth on this blog!

Can you help me ID this?

A while ago I bought this nice piece rather cheaply along with a lot of other odds and ends. And since we’re soon going to play a scenario with an undead theme (In the Hall of the Ghoul King) in September I thought it would be nice to use the model and give it a role in the game.

Well, I actually thought the piece was complete but once I had it stripped of its rather thick layers of paint, I discovered that something appears to be missing. There’s a hole in the left side of the base clearly intended for something – a torch or lamp perhaps – and a part might also have been snapped off on the right side of the throne.

Curious as to what is missing I attempted to find the miniature on Google but with no result. My initial feeling was that this must be a Grenadier model, but so far I’ve not been able to get this confirmed.

My question is thus if you can identify this mini and perhaps direct me to a picture of the whole thing in a complete state?

Cheers

Martin

 

Hobgobladi-Hobgoblada life goes on…

It’s been a while. Too many project, too little time but you know the drill. I have been planning to do a short write-up of the game we played last month but somehow I never got around doing so. I still hope to do at least some small thing concerning the game but for now I’ll just show you what I’ve been working on lately.

These seven, nasty chaps are Grenadier hobgoblins from 1990-91, of course sculpted by the master of the gnarled look Nick Lund. I really dig these models. As Claus said when I showed him the first three I finished: “very black metal!” And indeed they do look very evil and very metal. Their uniform hair and equipment made me choose to paint them in the same colour scheme. I chose some rather bright colours (red, blue and green) but dirtied them down and used grey in my highlights to flatten the intensity. This worked quite well I think.

I’m also fairly pleased with the skin tone. The first hobgoblin turned out rather yellow and I’ll probably at some point go back and change it (yeah right, as if!) to fit the bone-like colour of the rest. The details on the models are rather flat and slightly blurry, especially around the faces, which made them far from easy to paint and they took quite some time to finish. Especially the standard-bearer, who I by the way suspect is not sculpted by Nick Lund but only sculpted in the style of Lund. At least he is remarkably different from the rest of the guys.

The idea for the colour scheme of the hobgoblin uniforms came from this samurai drawing

Having done seven hobgoblins in a row I once again learned why I’ll never be able to finish a whole army of anything. Five models of the same type is my limits, anything beyond that bores to death.

Hopefully I’ll be back soon. I’m doing old Citadel greenskins again now.

At the altars of chaos – Another WIP picture

Just a quick update: Here you see the four altars which are to stand in the shrines of the small jealous gods who inhabit the vale named after said deities. From left to right you find the altar of Zhutlzzher – Lord of Screams and Spit, Ooeq’occ – Lord of Fumes and Smoke, Hlzyi – Lord of Dryness and Dust and finally Ssanil – Lord of Howls and Itching.

The altars are now on their way to be undercoated. Once they are painted I’ll show you the result.

 

 

 

 

Five beastmen looking for trouble

My painting endeavors have been slowed down lately due to work-related travels. However, I have managed to finish this bunch of beastmen. A mix of models painted with no thoughts as to their chaos allegiance. In fact I picked five random colours (blue, brown, reddish purple, pink and a flesh tone) and assigned one of them as the primary colour for each model.

The flesh coloured monkey-man in green armour is a bit interesting. The models is by no means the proudest moment in Citadel history, nevertheless it shows how easily older models were adjusted or reworked into new ones. This is for instance apparent when one compares the monkey-man with his alligator-man cousin (see below) who is a much more coherent mini and thus probably the first to see the light of day.

And if you are wondering who the little purple, skinny chap is photobombing the group shot of old Citadel lead, I can tell you that he is an old Grenadier beastman. I have had him in my leadpile for ages and decided to include him among the beefy Citadel chaps on a whim. To be honest he doesn’t work well with the others; he’s much too small when compared to the Citadel minis, but kind of like the ol’ Grenadier beastman, who has a certain charm to it, so who cares.

 

The alligator-man

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m the crawling king snake…

I finally had a chance to paint this piece of old lead; the giant snake produced by Grenadier. For some reason I’ve had my eye on this model for a while and early this summer I finally took the plunge and picked it up on Ebay. The model is fairly chunky and the snake’s head is both a bit too large and has a certain sense of slightly off complacency to it. Nevertheless I like it, although I’m not entirely sure why – perhaps it’s due to the size and weight of the mini.

The paintjob was fairly straight forward, but was nearly ruined by the gloss I used. I went with an old Humbrol gloss which messed-up the blendings on the scales of the snake. It still appears acceptable but I’m not satisfied with the model as it looks now, but it was quick to paint and should I find the inspiration, I’ll perhaps revisit it sometime in the future.

Sorry for the bad pics by the way, I had some problems with the lighting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A bunch of slave creatures

This is one of my recently finished projects. As some of you perhaps will remember I bought a large, mixed lot of minis fairly cheap this spring. In the lot this little group of figures immediately caught my eye. Honestly I really don’t know why – they are smallish, badly cast and rather messy. Nevertheless I like them and painted them up to be used as weird, kobold-like slave creatures in the scenario we played last week. Armed with slings they served the archmage Altarus nicely in the defense of his tower and were the cause for some good laughs – especially after Claus declared that they were firing their own dried feces as ammunition!

The paintjob was fast, if not rushed, and frankly the minis don’t invite to more thorough work. They are severely flawed in the casting and the details are in many cases almost blurred beyond recognition. In fact I still don’t know what these ratty little fellas are or who produced them. My guess would be that they are some sort of oriental goblins by Grenadier during the mid-80’s but that’s only guesswork. Can you identify them?

Here’s a photo of the fellas in the state I bought them in.