After last post‘s detour into card gaming, back this time with some more usual fare for this blog, models! I’m still pottering away at my Orcs and Goblins army and just finished these two extremely fun models: Snotling Pump Wagons!
For the non-initiated, Snotlings are what Orcs and Goblins call their even smaller cousins, which are even tinier goblins (The models are quite small as you might imagine!). Pump wagons are weird contraptions that are built, crewed, and powered by Snotlings, and as a result barely hang together but can surprisingly effective in the game … if they reach their target.
These models are actually the Blood Bowl Pump Wagons, which I much prefer to the proper Warhammer ones. Even though they’re plastic, they’re surprisingly fiddly to put together (to the extent that I think it’s on purpose to ensure they end up as rickety as if they’d been built by Snotlings!). They come as part of the Snotling Blood Bowl team which is packed full of characterful Snotling models, which meant I could cram them full of different sculpts.
While the models are the same model twice I tried to add some variety to them, mainly through the addition of different Snotlings as I mentioned, but also with some painting differences. The kit is also relatively flexible and lets you add pieces in a few different ways which is nice.
These were a lot of fun to paint as you might imagine. I had all the Snotlings separate for painting to make things a bit easier for myself, and gluing them to the pump wagon once everything was painted was very satisfying.
I’ve just embarked on a “small” side project which has my son very interested in miniature-related gaming so expect to see some (all?) of that next post!
With some leave over the Christmas break I’ve had a bit more time to paint (and game!) and have managed to get through a unit that I’d applied a basecoat to back in September-ish: River Trolls!
I’ve had these models for quite a while. I originally bought them to make Chaos Trolls back in the early 2010s and instead left them unbuilt for 10 years. It’s therefore nice to have them done for this latest project.
The models themselves are quite fun to paint as they have a decent amount of detail, much of which is quite characterful (including the infamous troll vomit!).
For units that are relatively unique in armies (i.e. that I won’t have to paint again) I like to experiment a bit with my painting. In this case I played around with oil washes in a slightly different way than I usually do. Normally I dilute my oils heavily with thinner, apply, blast with the hairdryer for a minute and get wiping the raised areas away with a sponge. I’ve had issues in the past with oil washes looking but not actually being dry by the time I varnish the models and found a few months later that the model has gone a bit tacky. Luckily this is easy to fix with a fresh coat of varnish. Here instead I went for a heavier wash (less diluted) and let it sit for a day or so before touching it. I was a bit worried that would limit my ability to wipe off the excess wash, but those fears were unfounded, and in fact I found it easier to get nice gradients with the wash in this way. To make sure the wash was dry before continuing, I left the models for another day or so, monitoring the areas where the wash had pooled the most. It’s a time consuming process but the results are worth it. Luckily for me I had something else to paint while I was waiting, which I will show later!
I wanted a cold green for these models to match their “riverness”, so I went for a basecoat of Vallejo Game Color (VGC) Heavy Blackgreen, and progressively mixed in more and more Vallejo Model Color (VMC) Pastel Green. The red fins are VMC Mahogany Brown, highlighted with a mix of the same brown and VGC Dead Flesh. The hair/fur is a mix of VMC Dark Sea Grey and VMC Black, highlighted with a mix of VMC Dark Sea Grey and VMC Pastel Green. The teeth/nails were a basecoat of VMC English Uniform, highighted with VGC Dead Flesh. The leather was VMC Chocolate brown, highlighted with a mix of the same and VGC Dead Flesh. All of these received the oil wash discussed above, which was a mix of Abteilung 502 Midnight Blue and Brown Wash oil paints.
Overall I’m very happy with these, nice addition to my Orcs and Goblins army.
As I said in the opening lines, I got some gaming in too this break, with a campaign game for our Border Princes campaign. The campaign was on a bit of a hiatus after the back end of the year got very busy for most of us (including a few weeks where 3 of us were out of the country!). The next match due was my Dwarfs against the Lizardmen, battling over a major crossroads. The game was a lot of fun and as a result I completely forgot to take photos! The outcome was our first draw of the campaign so far, which results in both armies retreating from the area. Here’s the campaign map at the end of Turn 6.
We’re currently planning our moves for the next turn, so hopefully I should have some updates soon.
One thing that happened during the game is I tried out the new engineer rules from the Dwarfs Arcane Journal. These allow you to take a Sapper Engineer, which allows all kinds of things such as entrenching your artillery, and booby trapping the battlefield. I equipped said engineer with a handgun inscribed with some of the new ranged weapon runes also found in the book. He then proceeded to cause more damage single-handedly than most of the other units I had in the game! I decided that meant he deserved a proper model and set about to making one as there is no Sapper Engineer model in the range.
I used an old metal dwarf handgunner (one of the first models I ever bought!) which has a really cool dragon head muzzle on his handgun. This looked appropriate as a runic handgun, and I also liked the practical attire he was wearing. One thing that was missing was anything that screamed “sapper”. The distinguishing mark for a sapper in the Napoleonic era (at least for the French army) was the carrying of a great big axe, but a dwarf carrying an axe just blends in so I went for a spade instead.
I wanted to accentuate the digging aspect so I tried to make it look like he’s taking potshots while digging a trench. Hopefully that comes through!
I’ve been chipping away at this small unit of archers for my Orcs and Goblins over the past few weeks. I have not been in any particular rush and it’s been quite nice painting at a sedate pace. I have a tendency to want to get things done fast, but with work quite busy lately it’s been good to do the fun things in life in a more relaxed fashion!
These are new casts of old models like much of the rest of the newly (re)released Orcs and Goblins models for Warhammer The Old World. These are pretty old sculpts now and were current when I started the hobby in the early 2000s. I’m absolutely the demographic for this nostalgia fueled set of releases!
I tried to make them look generally cohesive but in a haphazard manner, picking out their clothes in different colours. For my own future reference (I have plenty more of these to paint!) these are: Vallejo Model Color (VMC) German Fieldgrey WWII (also used for the fletching), VMC US Field Drab, VMC Black, and VMC German Camo Medium Brown (also used for the furs). The rest of the colours used are the same as for the rest of the army as detailed in my Orc Warboss post.
One nice discovery painting these was a new method (new for me at least!) for placing pigment powders on the bases in a much less messy way. So far I’ve been applying them dry, which tends to get them everywhere, and fix them using airbrushed varnish (at low pressure but still very messy). For these I experimented with mixing them with acrylic thinner before applying them in patches to the bases. I then dipped my brush in water and blended the patches into the uncovered section to get an uneven look. This method was much cleaner than dry application and was a lot easier to control. I’d recommend trying it out if you’re using dry pigments on your bases!
After a few posts promising a unit of goblins as the next addition to my Orcs and Goblins army (and a few posts apologising for failing to deliver!) I’ve finally finished this large unit of Night Goblins!
With a cool 42 models in it it is one of the largest units I’ve ever painted, and took me quite a while to get through. With its rather sizeable footprint it was a bit awkward to photograph too, a lot like a large terrain piece.
I ended up batch painting the unit row by row (i.e. seven models at a time), except the shields and the basing which were done for the whole unit at once. Each row was relatively quick to do, but together this added up to a lot of work (Basing took me a whole evening!).
The banner was quite fun to paint, although I went in to it without a good idea of what to put on it. I decided a mushroom would be a good option given the Night Goblin moon was already represented at the top of the banner pole. I painted on a mushroom and then wasn’t sure where to go from there. I ended up taking a photo of the banner and doodling on the photo on my iPad to test out designs to add to my mushroom and I settled on what you see below. It was great to be able to experiment with designs without painting over and over again so I’ll do that again, a good lesson learned.
You might have noticed the shaman holding the green-headed staff on the right of the unit. This is one of the army’s characters, in fact the only wizard I have planned in there at the moment. This is a classic model that I picked up on eBay alongside the netters you see in the unit.
The night goblin models are the newly re-released plastics that were the standard kit back in 6th edition. There is a more modern night goblin box which is from the 7th edition era which is now marketed as an Age of Sigmar set. I really like the older plastics and I’d been looking for a second hand box when GW announced they were re-realeasing them. That made me and my wallet very happy, those second hand prices were getting sky high.
This new set came with a transfer sheet with a couple of designs for the shields. I loved the moon design on those transfers so that was an easy pick. I’ve never applied this many transfers in a single sitting!
I’m glad to see the end of this one, I’ve been painting it on and off for what must be a couple of months now (inter-spaced with a few other small projects such as the Fanatics I did a while back, which will be launched from this unit), and it took some determination (and a fair few hours) to get them finished this week. I love the look of these models as a massed unit and am chuffed with how they came out. I’m going to paint up a smaller scale project next I think!
It’s been almost two months since the last post, probably the biggest gap in a while! It’s been a rather busy period family-wise (lots of birthdays in my family in July/August) and work-wise so I haven’t gotten much painting time lately. I’ve also chosen this period to paint a rather large unit of night goblins for my Orcs and Goblins army, so rather than wait another month to post something I decided to take a break from the big unit and paint up some supporting models, namely these fanatics!
For those of you unfamiliar with these rather fun models, fanatics are Night Goblins that have consumed a concoction of “special” mushrooms that give them the strength and willpower to twirl about while wielding oversized flails. They are hidden in Night Goblin units and get released when enemy units get close.
These models are older metal versions that I’ve had for quite a while now, so nice to get some paint on them. They are painted much like the rest of the army, although with more black cloth! For the recipes, check the first post on the army, which featured a Night Goblin perched atop an Orc Warboss!
That’s it for painting updates, but some campaigning happened since the last update on that so here is where things stand.
We had a win each for the Beastmen and Ogres in Turn 5, with the Ogres capturing the Beastmen’s home territory as a result of the first battle, but the beasts held their own in the second battle, scattering the Ogre army back to its own home territory.
The moves for turn 6 have been planned and we have one battle this round: my Dwarfs against the Lizardmen encroaching on my territory from the south!
Here’s hoping I can get through this busy period soon and resume more frequent posting!
It’s been a little while between updates, but I’ve been slowly chipping away at the miniature I’ll be showing today over the past month. Slowly because it’s getting chilly here down under and my hobby table is in a cold part of the house (and therefore is being visited much less often than usual!) and slowly because I’ve been really enjoying the process on this model!
The model as you probably realised from the post title is a giant! This is the plastic Warhammer giant from the mid 2000s, which is still current in the range. I got mine during 8th edition for my Ogre army, and like many other models from that era it has sat mostly unpainted since then. I rebased that army for Age of Sigmar so this model was transplanted onto an oval base, before being cut off that and put back on a square base for the return to classic Warhammer.
As I mentioned above, I thoroughly enjoyed myself painting this model and I went probably above and beyond what I would usually do for an army model, although I always do tend to try to spice up centerpiece models!
I really wanted to make it look like his pants were made from banners he’d collected over the years, so I painted them in a patchwork of colours, and applied transfers from all kinds of sheets I’d collected over the years to add some interesting patterns to the patches. From memory there are transfers from the Bretonnian, Eldar, Imperial Knights, and Space Wolf ranges on his pants.
Another detail I enjoyed painting because of the scale of the model was the nails, I tried to go for a dirty nail look with some muck caught under there. This might be a bit hard to see in the photos though, I think the best example is in that top photo on the hand that is holding the hapless man.
I spent a bit of time on his face, I don’t get to paint large scale heads very often given my usual subjects, so this was a fun new thing for me to do. I tried to go for the classic pale/red/blue zones on the face which I think worked out nicely, but I’m keen to see how you find it.
Overall I had a great time painting this giant, but it’s time to move on to smaller models again! I have the largest unit in the army lined up next, a big unit of night goblins which will likely keep me busy for quite a while so the next post may also be a bit further away than usual!
Back this week with more models for my Orcs and Goblins army: some Goblin Wolf Riders!
These are classic models (late 90s I believe!), which have been re-released as part of the current set of Warhammer Old World releases. This might be laziness on GW’s part, but I’m loving the fact you can buy some of these models without having to go through exorbitant eBay prices! These are the models that were current when I started the hobby, and couldn’t afford them at the time so this is very much an exercise in nostalgia for me!
I really enjoyed painting these, the goblin riders are so characterful and the old style “big” detailing is a joy to paint. For the wolves I tried something a little bit different. I really wanted a nice gradient on the furs so I basecoated them using the airbrush, starting with a cream colour all over then doing narrower and narrower bands of darker browns over their backs. I chickened out of doing highlights over this gradient so I decided to use oils to shade the furs so I could wipe them off of the raised areas. You can see the effect in the photo below.
I think that worked out pretty well, it’s not quite as clean as properly highlighting things, but it is much more expedient which is exactly what I’m after when painting army models. I have a second unit of these to paint up for the army, so I’ll be reusing the technique although I will be changing the colours to have some grey wolves for those.
For the Goblins themselves, I reused the recipes I laid out last post for the Warboss, so check that out if you’re interested!
Now I promised a couple of posts ago to post some photos of the first games of our Border Princes campaign and promptly forgot to include them in the last post, so here they are, better late than never!
If you remember the last update, my Dwarfs were attacking the Fortress at the center of the map, defended by the Bretonnian force I’d painted up for this purpose. As I was the attacker, one of the other players stepped in to play the defenders and we had a siege game!
The initial setup: two blocks of dwarf infantry pushing the siege tower and ranged units on the hill. On the defending side the walls are occupied by archers and men-at-arms, and surprising the attackers the unit of knights deployed outside the walls!
Cannons lining up the castle gate
The defenders look on as the attacking forces assemble.
The knights form up … outside the gates!
The cannons started shooting the gates, failing to do much and one of them misfired even with the engineer there to give it a re-roll! Luckily it only had to skip a turn, losing a war machine this early in the game would have been dreadful! The Siege tower was pushed forward by the dwarf infantry. On the defending side the knights advanced, resolved to chop that siege tower to scrapwood with their axes! On the walls the archers started shooting at the siege tower and managed to inflict some damage to it (presumably some critical ropes cut!). The following turn the knights managed to close in on the tower and almost destroyed it in combat!
The knights close in on the siege tower… and start hacking!
The dwarfs did not take kindly to this attempt to cut down their handywork and retaliated, closing in on the knights. The Demon Slayer and his rune axe made short work of the knights, but the damage was done, the siege tower on a single wound was more of a liability than anything else at this stag. The dwarfs abandoned it, taking a page out of the Knight’s book and deciding to use their own axes on the fortress gate.
The Dwarfs abandon their tower.
Under a hail of arrows the Dwarfs approached the gatehouse and got to work hacking down the gates. The cannons had finally started doing some damage to the gates and the rune axe of the Demon Slayer crashed through the wood of the gates soon enough.
The gates crash open!
Once inside the walls, a desperate melee started between the Dwarfs and the Men-at-arms led by the Baron started. The combat was inconclusive, but the last turn had arrived and the Dwarfs won the day, having taken the gatehouse and slain the knights for no full units of their own lost (although as you can see above those archers did a lot of work on those units!).
This battle resolves turn 4 and the map above shows the state of things as the turn ends.
The players made their moves for turn 5, and we have two battles lined up for this turn! Both feature the Ogres and the Beastmen, with the Ogres attempting to seize the starting location of the Beastmen, and the Beastmen trying to take the river section off the Ogres.
The defense of the Beastmen home territory has already been fought, although unfortunately I did not get to take many photos.
The battle was fought in a heavily wooded board, with the beast’s herdstone as the primary objective.
Things got very heated up in the area surrounding the herdstorne as both armies maneuvered to capture it.
Despite a desperate attempt by the beasts to reclaim their herdstone the Ogres won the day.
Hopefully you’ve enjoyed this longer than usual post! Plenty of gaming action in the coming months as this campaign gets played out, and I hope to be able to photograph most of it!
This week I have something else than Dwarfs for you, in fact something that Dwarfs really don’t like: a big green orc!
This model originally came with the limited edition version of the Warhammer Online video game. I never got the game but I did pick up this model at the time (can’t remember where from!). This orc is massive, much bigger than the average character model of orcs for the Warhammer fantasy universe, although probably in line with the Ork bosses in Warhammer 40,000 which are much bigger for some reason.
Regardless of the size, the model is packed with details and was really fun to paint. As this model will be leading my Orcs and Goblins army (another army!!?), I wanted to make sure he showed off the colours of the army: black, red, and yellow. These colours were not chosen at random, but rather they feature heavily in one of my favourite Warhammer arts of all time: the night goblin painting that graced the Night Goblin box for a while as well as the Ravening Hordes supplement for 6th edition. I’ve taken a photo of my copy you can see below for reference. I believe this is by Adrian Smith, who has done some of my favourite art for the setting.
As well as the main colours, I decided to match the skin tone from the painting, which is a yellower green than I’ve used on orcs in the past (see my Orks for reference). This model of course is mostly covered in armour so I used the freehand on the armour to make use of those colours, with the goblin on his shoulder directly matching the colours of the Night Goblin champion in the painting.
As is usual now for the first model(s) of a new army, I write down my recipes so I don’t forget them. Hopefully they can be of use to you too.
Skin: Vallejo Game Color Cayman Green, GW Agrax Earthshade, Vallejo Game Color Cayman Green, Vallejo Model Color Green Yellow, Scale75 Sherwood Green
Leather: Vallejo Model Color Chocolate Brown, GW Agrax Eathshade, 50/50 Vallejo Model Color Chocolate Brown/Vallejo Model Color English Uniform, Vallejo Model Color English Uniform
Bone/Wood: Vallejo Model Color English Uniform, GW Agrax Eathshade, Vallejo Model Color English Uniform, 50/50 Vallejo Model Color English Uniform/AK Ivory, 25/75 Vallejo Model Color English Uniform/AK Ivory
Silver: Scale75 Black Metal, GW Agrax Eathshade, Scale75 Black Metal, Vallejo Game Air Silver (This last one just on blade edges)
Dark Bronze: Scale75 Decayed Metal, GW Agrax Earthshade, Scale75 Decayed Metal
Red: Vallejo Game Color Heavy Red, GW Agrax Earthshade, 50/50 Vallejo Game Color Heavy Red/Kimera “The Red”, Kimera “The Red”
Yellow: Vallejo Game Color Heavy Goldbrown, GW Agrax Earthshade, Vallejo Game Color Heavy Goldbrown, GW Contrast Imperial Fist
Black: Vallejo Model Colour Black, Vallejo Model Color Dark Sea Blue, 50/50 Vallejo Model Color Dark Sea Blue/AK Ivory
White: AK Ivory
Basing – Rocks: Vallejo Model Color Dark Sea Blue, Vallejo Model Color Light Sea Grey (Drybrush), GW Agrax Earthshade, Ammo Mig Medium Rust Pigment
Basing – Dirt: AK Muddy Ground Diorama Texture, Ammo Mig Medium Rust Pigment
I’m quite excited to paint Orcs/Orks again, the new release has made a lot of the older models for the range accessible again which is great news for someone nostalgic for the era of Warhammer in which they started, i.e. me!
Lair of the Lagomorph 