Nicolas Small

The Warrens

It’s been a little while between updates, work has been rather busy and painting time has suffered as a result, but I’ve still been busy in the background! Quite a few models started over the last month, and unfortunately not many finished! Hopefully they will grace these pages soon, but for now here’s something I started this weekend and finished up early this week.

If you remember the map I drew for the Border Princes campaign, you might remember an area called “The Warrens”, that had a scattering of tall stones pictured in the area. This area has a special scenario associated with it (aptly named Rock Labyrinth!) that requires the board to be covered in rocky outcrops. This makes movement very difficult for ranked up regiments as you might imagine, and the scenario allows normally ranked units to fight in skirmish formation to ease their passage through the board.

The scenario consequently requires a great many rocks to be placed on the battlefield, many more than I had access to in my terrain collection so I decided to make up a batch for it.

These rocks are carved blocks of polystyrene, roughed up with a large wire brush and covered in homemade texture paint (mix of PVA glue, paint, sand, and bicarb soda). This texturing stage I did with my 3-year-old son who greatly enjoyed himself (He somehow got some on his back despite my best efforts to cover him with an apron!).

The goal was to have enough of these to play the Rock Labyrinth scenario on a 4ft by 4ft board, appropriate for the game size we’ll be playing during the campaign. The photo above shows them on a board of that size. It looks pretty cramped which is just right, mission accomplished there I’d say!

Turns out these rocks make for some fun backdrops for miniature photography so I couldn’t resist posing some models amongst them.

Here’s some proper dwarven terrain!

These were really fun to make, if a bit messy (I had the vacuum running while I was carving and still got polystyrene balls everywhere!). I look forward to playing some games using them, and I’m sure you’ll see them in the background of miniature shots in the near future.

Paladin

Warhammer: The Old World

Back this time around with another character model, and in this case it’s the model that takes me to 500 points of Bretonnians! This rounds out my small defenders of Malko force, a small army that will defend the central town in our Border Princes campaign.

This model is (I think!) an old Questing Knight, which I’m using as a Paladin with the Virtue of Empathy (fights on foot with the peasants!). I really like this model and wanted to save it for last for this small force of defenders of Malko.

In my last post I showed a boar’s head on the men-at-arm’s banner, representing their lord’s heraldry. This model is said lord so he of course needed a boar’s head on his shield. I think the version I painted on his shield is an improvement over what I had on the banner which is the right way around!

Just like for the Damsel I went with a richer green for this model, to make him stand out from the peasant soldiers which have a much more earthy green. The yellow is also more saturated on him than on the other models in the army for the same reason.

As he marks a milestone for the army (and in fact all I need to paint for the campaign), it’s time for a group photo!

It’s nice to see them all together, and this now means I have the minimum I need for the campaign across the three armies (1000pts of Dwarfs and Vampire counts and the 500 points of Bretonnians). This of course doesn’t preclude me adding more to them, but now the blocker to the campaign shifts to the terrain we need for the locations on the map, so I might spend more time on terrain in the short term.

Men-at-Arms

Warhammer: The Old World

The latest unit off the painting table is some reinforcements for the small Bretonnian garrison for Malko, the town at the center of the Border Princes campaign map.

These are a unit of Men-at-Arms, the other main peasant unit in the army, the first being the archers I painted a while back. Just like the archers, these models came from a second hand lot I got on ebay at the start of this project. Little did I know that a few months after I got these, the relaunch of Warhammer as the Old World would be announced and that if I’d waited I could have just bought new models!

If I sound a little bitter it’s because these weren’t much fun to paint to be honest! I’m pretty comfortable stripping plastic models, so had no issues with the one-piece archer models, but on these men-at-arms I encountered a different enemy: glue.

As you can see, these models are covered for the most part with large shields, and I knew I’d want to remove those for painting. The previous owner had generously doused the joints with glue and I ended up having to pry the shields off which resulted in some breakage. This left the models with some rather unsightly joins and I’d rather no one had a look too closely at the left arm on these!

The magic of ranked up models hides a lot of issues though, and while the damage dampened my enthusiasm for these, I do think they look pretty nice all ranked up. I had a great time painting the banner and the shields. For the shields I tried to paint on some basic heraldic looking patterns, with each shield being different to the others as you can see in the photos below.

For the banner I tried to free hand a heraldic boar’s head, as that’s the emblem I decided the noble leading these troops would have as his device.

On the other side of the banner I went for a sword motif to represent the men-at-arms.

I expect to have to do a lot of free handing when I get to painting some knights so this is great practice!

There you have it! While the process wasn’t the most fun, I am happy with how these look and glad to be that much closer to the goal of 500 points for these Bretonnians!

Grombrindal, the White Dwarf

Warhammer: The Old World

Small update again this week, with another model for my dwarfs! This time we have the White Dwarf himself, Grombrindal!

This is a pretty fun model, with his helmet serving as an impromptu ale flask, and quite the expression fixed on his face. This is one of the many Grombrindal models released over the years, of which I have a couple more. This one is one of the more useable in regular games of Warhammer however, being a single model on foot rather than a mini scene. I’ll use him as a Thane in the campaign games, and will have to look around see if they ever made any rules to represent the actual character in games!

I’d never seen the back of this model before and the large mullet I found there was quite the discovery!

This was a bit of a speed paint as it was done over the course of a single day, but I’m pretty happy with how he turned out and he’s happily sitting next to the rest of my dwarfs in the cabinet.

I’ve now had a nice little break from blocks of infantry, with the last few posts focussing on terrain and characters, but break over and I’m back to painting ranked models!

A Damsel

Warhammer: The Old World

Back relatively quickly this time with some more progress for the Border Princes campaign in the form of a character model (hence the speedy update!).

This model is a classic Brettonian Damsel model, one of my favourite Warhammer models ever, and I loved painting it. This sculpt is very detailed and fine, and after admiring it in the pages of Games Workshop publications for so many years it was a pleasure to see it in person.

When I started painting it I quickly gravitated towards this red hair/green dress combo, having pictured Merida from the animated movie Brave and deciding that would be a good look for this model.

I tried to take special care around the face, having found my usual face army painting process resulting in rather rough masculine faces that would not suit this model. I ended up working my way down rather than up as I would usually do. I started with GW’s Kislev Flesh as a base coat (this is my usual final highlight for caucasian skin tones), and glazed reds in she shadows and on the cheeks to shade and give a bit of life to the model. I used Vallejo Scarlet Red and GW Contrast Volupus Pink in turn, both very watered down for some very thin glazing.

The rest of the model was done much faster, with the hair done with a mix of red and yellow GW contrast paints to start with and then layered with regular acrylics (to the extent that almost none of the contrast shows through).

For the dress I wanted a slightly satiny look, so I highlighted my green basecoat by mixing in some pale blue a couple of times and placed some fairly harsh highlights to give that shiny material look.

Overall given the time taken I’m very happy with the result!

Another small piece of additional work went into printing and painting up some movement trays for my painted dwarfs units, which you can see below:

Three Years Already!

September marks three years since I’ve started this blog (which feels crazy to me, can hardly believe it’s been that long). This post will also mark 120 posts on the blog which is not bad going!

To celebrate and mark the occasion I decided that my trusty header that had served me well all this time needed an overhaul.

I spent some time this afternoon putting together a collection of stuff I though looked neat and photographing it to use as a backdrop for the header. I then set about sorting out the text, and ended up with something that definitely has a Stranger Things crossed with Warhammer vibe, but there are worse influences out there!

I’ve also decided to make this a little bit more official and finally get a proper domain for the blog: http://lairofthelagomorph.com. I’m treating this as a bit of a reward for myself for having stuck to this blogging thing for 3 years, here’s to many more!

The Chapel and Watchtower

Terrain, Warhammer: The Old World

Between Baldur’s Gate 3 sessions I’ve been doing some more terrain painting for Warhammer. This time around a couple of kits that came out a few years before last post’s Skullvane Manse: an Empire chapel and watchtower. These two also came out as a combined kit where extra parts liked them together into one bigger building, but I don’t own that variant!

These are both great models and I was pretty chuffed when a friend gave me his seeing as I never picked them up when they were still being sold by GW. Just like the Skullvane Manse I took my time painting these hence the 3ish week gap between posts (the aforementioned Baldur’s Gate 3 sessions did not help!).

I think the results are worth it though, and I’m excited to put these on the table! Here’s some 360° shots of the buildings.

*Had some fun adding gloss varnish to the windows, I think that worked pretty well*

*Wouldn’t be a proper Warhammer building if it didn’t have skulls all over!*

*I felt bad oxidising that clock, but the mechanisms are all exposed, what else could I do!*

*I picked out a few tiles in a darker brown and a few in a lighter terracotta to add a bit of variation.*

*The lower stone areas got the green enamel wash treatment to get that mossy/licheny feel.*

*The copper oxidisation is done with Games Workshop’s Nihilakh Oxide, slightly watered down.*

*The skeleton enshrined in the wall is quite small, I choose to believe it must have belonged to some sanctified halfling.*

*The variations in tones on the cream sections of the wall are a result of* *first airbrushing Vallejo* Desert Yellow over the undercoat colour, then washing it with a brown wash, and highlighting it with some very thin (a glaze effectively) Vallejo Desert Yellow. The wash left some great grimy patterns all over the walls of both buildings which *was a pleasant surprise!*

I hope you’ve enjoyed these! I’m not too sure what I’ll be painting next but I think it’ll be models rather than terrain. Time will tell!

Skullvane Manse

Terrain, Warhammer: The Old World

After painting quite a few models for our Border Princes campaign, and a good chat in the comments of fellow blogger Kuribo’s latest post, I decided to get some terrain done. I wanted this terrain to contribute towards the campaign, so painted an old (well not so old!) Warhammer terrain kit: Skullvane Manse, also known as Warscryer Citadel in its Age of Sigmar re-release. For the campaign, it will be used for battles fought around the town of Aldium, which is home to many wizardy types that like to do their research far from the gaze of imperial witch hunters!

It is quite a fun model, with a ton of detail. The rickety tower reminds me of the tower Merlin is given in the old Disney movie The Sword in the Stone for those that remember that! With its giant telescope it seems like an excellent home to a wizard. It is covered in Empire iconography, but you have to fool witch hunters somehow!

This model is very tall, and was a bit of a challenge to paint as a result. The only sub-assembly I did was to keep the telescope cupola separate, and I kept the rest of the model in one piece which was definitely a mistake. This made the painting process much more complicated, as I had to wield this big model while trying to get to many hard to reach places.

I did have a lot of fun painting it however, it is just covered in fun details, and while I was initially going to paint it to my normal terrain standard, I ended up putting quite a bit of time into this model.

This model has a lot of stone on it, and one thing I did to break all that up was to make the natural rock a blue grey, and the artificial stonework a more desaturated grey. I don’t think that came through in the photos that well however, but in person it’s pretty visible.

Another bit of experimenting I did was with the telescope’s lens. I painted the lens as I would any other, but then instead of gloss varnish to finish it off, I filled the hollow part with UV Resin, and cured it in place. This gives a pretty fun effect in person, hard to capture in photos but I’ll let you imagine it. The UV resin is 2-3mm thick above the painted area, so the depth really adds a lens-like quality to it,

To give you a sense of the scale of this model, and showcase some detail not captured in the photos above here are some more photos with models included.

Anyway I hope you enjoyed that model! I’m not sure what’s headed to the painting table next, but given how much fun I had painting this I could well see more terrain on its way soon!

More Archers!

Warhammer: The Old World

Following on from my last post I painted more archers from my set of 5th edition Bretonnians for the garrison of Malko. This is the second sculpt these models came in, and just like last time I had 12 to get through.

Panting-wise these are identical to the last batch so not too much to comment on there, but it’s nice to have these all done. Just like the previous ones, I tried to have no duplicates in terms of colours which kept painting 12 of the same model more interesting.

There is plenty more Bretonnian infantry is on the way, but that’s it for archers!

Earlier this week some LED light panels arrived in the post, and I got to try them on this post’s photos. They made lighting the photos a bit easier, and offer some interesting possibilities for photos with coloured light as you can see in the photo at the top of the post. Keen to try these out and see what I might be able to do with them!

Defenders of Malko

Warhammer: The Old World

I hinted last post that I was going to start on another faction for our Border Princes campaign. If you remember, right at the start of this project I drew up a map of the Border Princes that the campaign will be fought over. At the centre of that map is the town of Malko, one of the major objectives of the campaign. We decided that Malko should have some neutral defenders, to provide some opposition to any players trying to take the town.

In come these Bretonnian archers! The Border Princes is a region outside the more civilised areas of the old world, but is home to some that try their luck in the wilder areas. This includes quite a few Bretonnian nobles that decide to strike out with their retinues and make a life there. As such Bretonnia was a clear pick for the neutral faction that occupies Malko.

These archer models are the ones that were found in the 5th edition Warhammer starter set. They are single part models and there are two poses. You’ll notice all the archers in this batch are the same pose however, as I decided to paint 12 of the one pose and then do 12 of the other pose later.

While I’m talking about these models, definitely check out the Hammer the Backlog blog, especially posts like this one, with photos of the fully painted starter set in question! Lee over there has done an awesome job of bringing them to life.

To break up the uniformity of the models I decided to try to differentiate them by changing the patterns of their clothes. I think it worked pretty well!

Painting-wise these are nothing special, mostly my usual basecoat > wash > highlight process I do for my “bulk” army models. Here are the colours used:

Undercoat: Vallejo Primer Dunkelgelb

Yellow: Undercoat (left as is) > GW Agrax Earthshade > Vallejo Heavy Goldbrown

Green: Vallejo Heavy Green > GW Agrax Earthshade > Vallejo Heavy Green > 50/50 Vallejo Heavy Green/Vallejo Russian Uniform WWII

Wood (Bow/Arrows): Vallejo German Came Medium Brown > GW Agrax Earthshade > Vallejo German Came Medium Brown > 50/50 Vallejo German Came Medium Brown/Vallejo German Camo Beige WWII

Leather: GW Gore Grunta Fur Contrast > GW Agrax Earthshade

Silver: Scale 75 Black Metal > GW Agrax Earthshade > Scale 75 Black Metal

Brass: Scale 75 Necro Gold > GW Agrax Earthshade > Scale 75 Necro Gold

Light Skin: GW Bugman’s Glow > GW Reikland Fleshade > GW Bugman’s Glow > GW Cadian Fleshtone > GW Kislev Flesh > GW Carroburg Crimson (Noses only!)

Dark Skin: GW Bugman’s Glow > GW Contrast Cygor Brown > 50/50 GW Bugman’s Glow/GW Contrast Cygor Brown

Base Rims: Vallejo US Field Drab

These were fun to paint, and very quick! I have the second batch sitting in paint stripper, and they should be ready soon. Good chance then that the next post will be more archers unless I get distracted by something else along the way!

Terrorgheist

Warhammer: The Old World

Back much sooner this time, with just the one model, but a big one at that!

*Sorry for the “Inception” style floor rising up into the sky on this shot! This is a very tall model and I* *didn’t have any terrain tall enough to act as a backdrop!*

This is one of the biggest monsters Games Workshop produced for the old Warhammer world back in the day, a Terrorgheist! Effectively a really, really, big undead bat that has unnatural terror causing powers (I’d be terrorised quite naturally if I saw one of these!). I’ve always loved this model and at the same time been extremely daunted by the idea of painting it, hence this model staying as bare plastic for the last 10 or so years…

After painting my unit of slayers, I wanted to paint something a bit more loosely and settled on this big bag of bones. With that in mind, the painting ended up being very straightforward: Wildwood contrast on all the leathery skin bits, Skeleton Horde contrast on all the bone bits, and Flesh Tearers Red contrast on the exposed fleshy bits and the mouth. The model then got an all over dousing of a wash made from Brown and Grey oil paints. I left it to sit around for most of a day and then picked out all the bone areas in Vallejo Model Colour German Came Beige WWII and highlighted them with a mix of the aforementioned beige and Vallejo Model Colour Bonewhite. The ears and nose were picked out in GW Bugman’s Glow, washed with GW Druchii Violet, and highlighted with a mix of GW Bugman’s Glow and Vallejo Model Colour Dead Flesh. Quite simple and quick overall!

You may have noticed some red goopy bits all over the mouth of the beast in the photos so far! This was my first attempt at trying out the stringy gore effect I’ve seen quite a bit in other painter’s photos. It’s quite simple to achieve really, get some UHU tube glue (the transparent gel-like version you squeeze out of a tube) and mix in some red (I found GW Flesh Tearers Contrast worked best for me, I also tried GW’s Blood for the Blood Good, but that seemed to react with the glue and dry too fast to be useful). Use a wooden skewer or toothpick to then pick up your red sticky blob and start tacking it on a part of the model and stretch to another. Repeat until sufficient horror has been achieved!

The mouth wasn’t the only area getting this treatment, the model has these exposed innards that seemed like another appropriate spot to use this!

I’m interested to see how resilient this ends up being on what is a gaming model, it could be this is only a useful technique for display models that can expect a lot less handling. I’ll report my findings at some stage in the future! Regardless, it’s quite easy to do and looks great I think.

This model comes with a humongous base (which as you can see is nicely warped), and while the model comes with these rocks that do a neat job of starting to fill it, I knew I was going to need something else on there to break it up some more.

As a start I put in this mini scene of a zombie starting to pop out of the ground, although clearly this rat thinks that breakfast was just delivered! For the rest of the space, I broke out my big tufts. These are mostly leftovers from sets of tufts that are too big to fit on regular bases and have been piling up in my tufts box for a while now. Nice to have something to use them on.

The more Warhammer savvy of you might have recognised that I’ve talked about using 6th edition Warhammer for this campaign and that this model didn’t arrive till 8th edition (if memory serves!). My Vampire Counts for the campaign are themed around the Necrarch bloodline, and the Necrarch specific army list at the back of the 6th edition army book allows them to take unridden zombie dragons as a rare choice (normally these require a vampire to ride them) to represent their mastery of necromancy. This seems like a great way to run this model without having to make up rules so that’s what I’m doing!

That’s it for this update, I had a lot of fun painting this model and I get to pivot onto another faction after this. Something I haven’t posted anything about yet!