painting – Page 3 – Lair of the Lagomorph

River Trolls

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!

Goblin Archers

Warhammer: The Old World

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!

Really Tiny Space Marines

Legions Imperialis

Back after what must have been the biggest break this blog has seen! I’ve been traveling for work and as such have had pretty much no time to paint in October between the trip itself and preparation for said trip. I’m back at home now, and started something I’ve been eyeing off for a while now: Legions Imperialis – the revamp of the old Epic 40,000 game system.

As I mentioned above, I’ve been thinking of getting started in Legions Imperialis since it launched – something about the scale of the battles really appeals to me (For the same reason, I’ve also been eyeing off Warlord’s epic scale offerings). What prompted actually diving in was a couple of happy occurrences: I was lucky enough to stumble on someone selling all of the books second hand for a steal, and my local game store had a sale a few weeks later during which I picked up the Battle Group box for the marines.

While I was travelling I re-read Legion, which might well be my favourite Horus Heresy novel, and (re-)enjoyed it so much that I decided these marines should be painted as Alpha Legion.

When I popped open the box I finally realised how tiny these models actually are. Looking at pictures online isn’t quite the same as holding the models in your own hands and as you can see from the comparison shot with the 28mm marine above, this is quite a departure from what I’m used to painting!

I often see Horus Heresy era Alpha Legion painted in a metallic blue/green colour. I decided to stray closer to blue here, with the markings in a minty green. The painting (by necessity!) is really simple. I started with a black undercoat and airbrushed some Ammo Mig Warhead Metallic Blue all over the models. The exhaust covers on the rhino and the boltguns on the marines were then picked out in Vallejo Model Color Black, and the bare metal details were painted in Scale 75 Black Metal. The markings were painted in Army Painter Kraken Skin. The models then got an all over wash of Ammo Mig Deep Brown Panel Line Wash, which was wiped off the raised areas to keep things clean.

The models come with these nice textured bases that I wanted to use rather than cover up, so I decided to go for an overgrown ruins look. I basecoated the surface with Vallejo Game Color Heavy Bluegrey, followed by the same panel liner as the models. I then applied a wash of heavily diluted AK Muddy Ground texture paint (a tip I picked up from the Cult of Paint youtube channel) all over the base. This adds a bit of texture and a nice gradient brown to the base while not hiding the texture modelled into the base. I then glued on a few bits of foam turf from Woodland Scenics, and applied some light washes of AK Slimy Grime Dark and Slimy Grime Light to add some green colour in patches. I’m satisfied with the outcome, it looks in scale to me, keen to hear what others think.

Overall these were fun and quick to paint, I think the metallic paint does a lot of work here, and makes the models pop despite their size. Unlike pretty much all my other models I did not varnish these as I didn’t want to lose the shine contrast between the marines and the base. I have a whole lot more of these to paint now, but I’m happy with the scheme so can safely proceed from here!

Giant!

Warhammer: The Old World

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!

Orc Warboss

Warhammer: The Old World

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)
Light Bronze: Scale75 Necro Gold, GW Agrax Earthshade, Scale75 Necro Gold
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!

Siege Preparations

Warhammer: The Old World

As I mentioned last week, we’re preparing for a siege game as the opening battle in our Border Princes campaign. Last week’s post covered the last of the defenders, and this week’s will cover the preparations I made to the attacking force: my Dwarfs!

As you can see in the photo above I decided that I needed more firepower! I painted two extra cannons this week to breach the gates of the fortifications, which is one of the main objectives of the scenario.

I painted the two cannons different colours to add a bit of variation to the models, considering this is the third of this cannon model I have in the army now. I picture dwarfs as being more artisanal craftspeople and therefore making the cannons as they see fit rather than follow a set pattern.

Of course the crews also being one piece models there is no variation in them, so once again I used colour to differentiate them, mostly through the beards but also by changing the colour of some of the clothes.

While the cannons attempt to breach the walls, I have another way to cross the walls: a siege tower!

I built this a while back and haven’t had the need until now to paint it. This siege game is the perfect excuse to get it finished and on the table!

The tower itself is built out of balsa wood, with the wheels from the Skaven warp lightning cannon kit. The ladders are 3D prints I did a long time ago for the This Is Not A Test games we were playing back in 2021. They ended up fitting rather nicely here!

I kept the tower rather faction agnostic so that it can be used for any siege game, it is probably less well constructed than Dwarfs would like, but much better constructed than Orcs could manage!

The platform at the front of course pivots, ready to come crashing down on some battlements and disgorge its occupants! I’m planning on filling it with dwarf Troll Slayers, so the above shot is probably a preview of the game to come!

The game is tomorrow and I’ll endeavour to take some photos that I’ll post here.

Dryads

Warhammer: The Old World

The Old World release has had me going around in circles reading, getting excited about an army, army list writing, model building, model painting, rinse and repeat for another army. So I’ve started a lot of things but not finished much! One thing that I have realised doing this is that I really enjoyed painting those Treemen last post and wanted to paint some more foresty units!

So I broke out some dryads from the foam cage of an army case, rebased them on the new base size and got to painting them! Much like the treemen, this was rather free-form painting, starting with an airbrushed basecoat of a patchy mix of browns, greens, and blues and going from there.

This has turned out to be a rather fun way to paint, and gives rather nice results for these rather organic models. I think this would work quite well for something like Tyrannids in Warhammer 40,000.

I think the shots from the rear show the patchy nature of the paint work well, being flatter and less obscured with detail.

One thing I do need to figure out is how I’m going to paint the elvish section of the army. This works well for all the forest spirits, but I’ll need to try out something for the non-tree people!

Regardless of how I decide to do the elves, I’m pretty committed at this stage to paint up a small force of Wood Elves for the Old World. In fact I’m leaning towards choosing them as my army for our Border Princes campaign. I’m finding the new rules don’t suit how I’d like to run my Dwarves at 1000 points (But look excellent for running them in bigger games!) so that may cause me to pivot to a different army.

On a different note, I painted this mischievous Christmas goblin for a friend a couple of weeks ago and finally managed to meet up to hand it over so I figured it was time to post up some pictures!

A rather fun model to paint!

I’m most of the way through some more Wood Elf models (still Forest Spirits!) so expect a post on them soon!

Treemen

Warhammer: The Old World

One of the things that has me excited about the new Warhammer ruleset is that the armies are self-contained in the main army books, so I can start planning out all sorts of armies without having to wait for them to be re-released for the game. Given that I have a decent collection of models that will be useable in it, I’ve decided I’ll have the most fun if I work on models for the Old World in general rather than painting one army after another. This means picking up what I feel like painting most and getting it done! Last week we had Tomb Kings, this week Wood Elves!

After the base sizes for the new game were announced for models, I had a hunt through my collection for models staying on the same base size that I could paint while I wait for my Tomb Kings starter set. I came across these treemen which have been sitting undercoated in a case for close ten years, and I decided they deserved some paint after their long entombment! These actually belonged to my wife when she had a period of interest in tabletop gaming (as a result of which we met!), and I’ve inherited them since.

We have 3 variants here, 2 treemen, a treeman ancient, and the named character Durthu. I’ve taken photos of each side of each, and put them into a slideshow for each model so you should be able to scroll sideways though them.

Treemen

Treeman Ancient

Durthu

From a painting perspective, these models were painted in a rather freeform manner (apart from Durthu which had much more of a plan, detailed below). I first took to them with the airbrush and put on random patches of greens, browns, blues, greys. I then started highlighting the models, roughly following the patchy undercoat. This required a lot of mixing, as the patches of airbrushed paint blended into each other. So no paint recipes here, each area was done on its own and the ratios based on whatever made sense there. I think this gave a really naturalistic look to these models as trees are far from uniform in nature, being covered in all kinds of mosses, lichen, mud, etc.

This was an extremely fun way to paint and I’ll definitely replicate that on the rest of the forest spirit models in the army.

Durthu as I mentioned above had a much more deliberate plan in his painting, driven by my experiences walking in the local bush land here in Perth. It’s rather common to come across burnt bush around here, either from bushfires, or burn offs done to reduce the impact of future bushfires. The forests end up black after these events, but nature here is built to live through these events, and when rain comes life springs anew from the ashes, revealing what I think its a pretty amazing sight: bright green new growth surrounded by pitch black burnt forest. Here are some photos I’ve taken of what I’ve seen here.

Having grown up near temperate European forests, I find this quite an amazing sight and have always wanted to paint a model that tries to replicate the effect. That’s what I tried to go for on Durthu, his main trunk is blackened by fire, but bright new leaves are coming up.

Dwarfs were the first Warhammer models I bought, but Wood Elves were my first “proper” (i.e. built to a decent size) army for Warhammer. I have a lot of models for that army, although most are in a dire state so I’m excited to repair and repaint them and get them back on the table with the new ruleset.

I’m using these new rules to indulge my love of painting whatever I feel like at any given time so I’m not sure what I’ll be painting next! Potentially some more terrain for the Border Princes campaign, we’ll see when I sit down at the painting table next!

Chariots of the Dead

Warhammer: The Old World

To the surprise of absolutely no one I’ve been very excited for the relaunch of classic Warhammer as the Old World and doubly so now release is just around the corner. As part of said release I ended up ordering one of the stater sets, and not the one that might have been expected given the fact I’ve been painting Bretonnians recently. So off to the dusty tombs of Khemri for me!

Clearly I was excited about Tomb Kings after that, so I scrounged around my forgotten sprues pile and found a full box of Tomb King chariots! Well not so full, one of the crews was missing, probably cannibalised for some long forgotten project. I decided then that this crew-less chariot should serve as a character mount, and low-and behold I had in my possession a model of Prince Apophas, the mass of beetles with a head (very the Mummy). I’d gotten Apophas as a fun alternate Wraith for my Vampire Counts many years ago and had converted him to wield a scythe of all things, and promptly never painted him. I therefore had an empty chariot and a purpose-less Tomb Kings character on my hands and settled on making him my chariot rider!

Given his previous stage of conversion, the original dagger the model came with was long lost, and while I still have the original head, I wanted to change that to make this a bit more than just Apophas on a chariot. I had a look around for promising heads and found Arkhan the Black’s head as a spare on the Mortarchs sprue, left over from when I built Neferata many years ago. That seemed like a good fit so on it went. I thought his arm position was well suited to be cracking a whip, so I had a look around for an appropriate donor model, and cast my eyes upon a poor metal dark elf chariot rider, again leftover from some previous project (see, you should never throw anything away), and cut off his whip to give to my new chariot rider.

These 3 chariots will join up with the 3 that come in the starter army to make a nice chariot block, when I get these I’ll build the command models so the unit has the usual banner/musician/champion. Speaking of the starter army, I’ll not be getting this till February, as Australia is a few weeks behind the rest of the world for receiving their stuff unfortunately, so I better write down my recipes so I can match up the new models with these!

Acronyms:
- VMC: Vallejo Model Color
- VGC: Vallejo Game Color
- PA: Pro Acryl
- S75: Scale 75
- GW: Games Workshop/Citadel
- AK: AK Interactive

Blue
- VMC Dark Prussian Blue
- VMC Andrea Blue
Red
- VMC Cavalry Brown
- PA Shadow Flesh
Bone
- 50/50 GW Aggaroth Dunes/Contrast Medium
- 50/50 VGC Bonewhite/AK Ivory
Leather
- GW Wyldwood Contrast
- For larger areas only:
  - VMC English Uniform
  - 50/50 VMC English Uniform/VGC Bonewhite
  - 30/70 VMC English Uniform/VGC Bonewhite
Bronze
- S75 Necro Gold
- GW Nihilakh Oxide
- For larger areas only:
  - VMC Light Sea Grey – very thinned down, in uneven patches
Gold
- S75 Elven Gold
- GW Reikland Fleshshade
- S75 Elven Gold
Scrolls/Fabric Straps
- GW Skeleton Horde Contrast
- VMC Iraqi Sand
Bases
- AK Sandy Desert (Texture)
- Mig Light Dust (Pigment)

Note that in addition to the above the models got a pin wash of dark brown enamel to pick out the details. If you’ve followed the blog for a bit you’ll notice that my usual application of GW’s Agrax Earthshade for shading is absent. I decided I wanted to get these models much brighter and less contrasty than usual to get that sunbaked feeling, hence the light enamel wash instead of the usual heavy acrylic wash.

These models were really fun to paint, and I look forward to the sea of bones headed my way in the new starter set! As for what I’ve seen of the new rules so far, I’m really liking. It’s capturing the essence of the editions I really enjoyed, that is 6th and 7th editions. We’ve already decided to use this new edition for our Border Princes campaign, and I can’t wait to get stuck into the new books.