wargaming – 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!

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!