AoBR Warboss W.I.P.

You might have seen in one of my earlier posts that I bought the Assault on Black Reach Warboss and a couple of Nobz. Since then I slightly converted the Warboss making his powerklaw a bit more menacing and I created a base that will fit in with the rest of my Ork horde.

only the "Base paint" done 

When the black undercoat was dry I started with what I call "base painting". This means I paint everything on the model with a single layer with the darkest or deepest color. It's a good way to see what the model will look like eventually.
One of the prominent colors I use for my Bad Moons is of course sunburst yellow but that's a real hard color to paint with because it just doesn't cover at all. What I do is I mix up sunburst yellow with Lysanden Darksun foundation paint and when that layer is dry I layer some diluted sunburst yellow on top of that to create that popping yellow color.
As a spot color I use Liche Purple you can see that color coming back on my models here and there. It's a nice contrast color to the Sunburst Yellow.
I find the best way to make good looking teeth and claws is to start with Graveyard Earth and work that up to a mix of Bleached Bone and Skull White. In the picture you can see that the base color is graveyard earth.
Orks should always be green but I think a muted green or realistic green looks a bit nicer then the bright Orks you see around. I use Gretchin Green foundation paint as a base color and work it up from there. you will get a light green skin from that. I do wash the skin with Devlan Mud, Gryphonne Sepia and Leviathan Purple in between each layer and I do dilute some washes. I will talk about that more in a later post.

Now that the Base painting is done I check for errors and correct them if needed and then I will start to apply some washes but more on that later...

Seb

Ork Nobz Finished (part 2)

I showed off my finished Ork Nobz last friday but I got some messages that my picture lay-out didn't bring out the Nobz' Sparling personality or bubbly characters. Now I didn't spend hours working on them to keep them for myself so today I'm posting there individual mugshot and ditch the funky photo concept I designed.

So here they are:

Seb

AoBR Warboss and Nobz

I'm scouring the interwebs to build my Ork army El Cheapo and I found someone selling the AoBR Nobz and Warboss for about $15,-. A steal and a great addition to my small Ork force.
I got them in the mail on Friday so after work I opened up the package. They were all cut from the sprue but all complete, The Assault on Black Reach set is made so you can basicly model the mini's in one single way. They don't come with a lot of extra bits and weapons but I still have some left over from my other Ork Nobz so I wanted to see if I could use them.

So here's what they look like straight from the box:

But after only two hours this is what they look like now:

AoBR Warboss and Nobz converted

I must say that most small conversions were straight forward swaps but I did have to cut some limbs in order to make it all fit. The only two things I changed on the warboss is his powerklaw and he now has a chainsaw attached to his gun. The nobz required some more work by giving two of them Powerklaws and other weapons but I also buffed them up a bit with extra armour plates and shoulderpads. Right now I still need to remove the moldlines(I hate that) and assemble them because now they are just bluetacked together, then theyll be ready for the undercoat and they'll look much better after that. 

The AoBR Nobz looked smaller and with less detail then the Nobz I already have but like this they blend in very well I think. Oh' and ofcourse most time went in creating the bases again. More info on that in my topic on Trashy Ork Bases.

Seb



Ork Nobz Finished

It took me a while but I got there in the end. I finished this bunch of Ork Nobz last Saturday as part of my Kill Team.

Ork Nobz and Ammo Grot (click to enlarge)

I like the way the yellow turned out although on this picture it looks a bit orange. They are a blast to paint and have a lot of detail. The good thing is I have plenty of spare bitz so I have ordered some Ork Nobz and Warboss from the Assault on Black Reach set. (somecrazy fool was selling them off on the internet, lol) I should get them in today so I hope to get some conversion work done this weekend.

I was inspired be some other blogs here that had some great looking Orkz. I wasn't planning on starting a new 40K army but these guys suckered me in. Want to see the work that inspired me?
click here:
B.Smoove's Teeftotallers
Digital Waaagh Gallery
Porky's crazy conversions
Musings of a smurf blog

A good start of my Waaagh, let me know what you think.

Seb

Fantasy Friday: Empire Mercenary Maneater

I have been looking forward to the end of this week so much. You might have noticed that things went very quiet here on my blog. The reason was that my 6 months old son got ill and also passed it on to me last sunday. With hardly any sleep in the past week and many runs to the toilet I didn't get any work done at all. Hence the missing Wednesday W.I.P.

But now things are looking up again and my son sleeps through the night again and I'm feeling much better myself today. It's a shame I missed my monthly gaming day at the club but I did manage to get my 200 points Kill Team fully painted. I'll get another topic on that up later.

Then without further much ado, Here's the Empire Mercanary Maneater from the Fantasy army Ogre Kingdoms. If you look closely that there's a baby Gnoblar on his head hiding behind the feathers and he's holding a piece of a statue in his hands as a weapon. Look at the 3 fists holding that hammer. I never noticed it before un till I got the miniature in my hands.

So this was the last maneater I painted, if you want to have a look at the other ones I did then have a look here: for the Pirate maneater, Paymaster maneater, Ninja maneater. Next week something completely different again.

Seb

Fantasy Friday: Maneater Ninja

Yeah! It's friday again! The end of the week and also another episode of Fantasy Friday!

In the past two weeks I showed off the Ogre Kingdoms Maneater Pirate and Paymaster and today we are continuing our tour in Ogre land with the Maneater Ninja.

Click to enlarge

I painted these fellas up for a client and he gave them to me already assembled and undercoated so i have no idea where all the weapons and equipment went that was supose to go on his belly. I found this the hardes maneater to paint because it's a striking figure but very bare. I tried my best making it look interesting and good.

Next week is the last of the maneaters that I will shocase here at Fantasy Friday and after that maybe some Chaos, Empire or Vampire counts.

Seb

Wednesday W.I.P.11

It's been quite a good week on the hobby front. I managed to get my Watchtower and Chapel done and nothing is more satisfying then finishing a project. Certainly when that project had been sitting on a shelf looking at me for the past few months. I think every miniature painter out there has the same problem, Too many project and not enough time to finish them all. The result of having so many projects for me usually means that I assemble the model and put the undercoat on with black or light grey primer and leave it like that for 2 or 3 months. Then i come back to that project, paint it a bit and then put it away again..

This year my new year's resolution was not to buy anything anymore before I had finished a good deal of my models that weren't finished yet. I already broke that promise but so far I've done pretty good and actually finished a good couple of projects.

Click to enlarge

This coming Sunday I'll play some Kill Team games at my gaming club and I thought it would be fun to play a game or two with my new Orks. The only problem is that 4 out of my 5 Nobz are not yet painted so these coming days all my time goes in to finishing them. I already have most of the basepainting done as you can see in the picture but still some way to go. The fifth Nob is finished, I painted him so I could have a little try out with the color scheme. If you want to see how he turned out have a look at on older post of mine HERE.


The Kill Team I want to field looks like this:

10 Gretchin with Grotblasta's
1   Runtherd with Grabbastick and Slugga
1   Nob with Powerklaw and Slugga
1   Nob with Big Choppa
1   Nob with Scarcha/Shoota combi
1   Nob with Choppa and Slugga
1   Nob with Choppa and Slugga
Total: 200points

I have never played Kill Team before so I have no idea how this list will work but it's about having fun more then winning. I'll try to take some pictures of the games and pour it into a topic here on my blog.

Seb

Terrain: Games Workshop Chapel

It's getting a bit repetitive but here's another Warhammer Fantasy terrain piece. It's the chapel I finished recently. I had a good run and finished no less then 3 terrain pieces.The Watchtower, Woods and now Chapel. I only have the Temple of Skulls left to do.

I love painting up these pieces because you can drybrush most of it and add a few details and weathering at the end and it will look good. All I need now is a gaming table or at least big display board but for now these pieces really bring my display cabinets to life.

The rest of the week I'll be working on my Ork Nobz for a Kill Team game on Sunday so work on the Temple of Skulls is on hold.

Seb

Terrain: Games Workshop Watchtower

Last week I spent a lot of time working on my warhammer fantasy terrain pieces. I had already finished the Citadel Woods set and started work on the Watchtower and Chapel. Now those two are finished too and I just have to work some more on the Temple of Skulls.

So here's the result on the watchtower. It's a nice piece with again a lot of drybrush work but I also painted a lot of rusty bits and some weathering on it and to complete it all I added some moss.

I'm not to sure about the weathering but as a terrain piece it will do nicely. I'll upload a post on the chapel soon so stay tuned...

Seb

Kill Team, The Challenge

My local gaming club is going to run some Kill Team games this coming Sunday so I thought it would be nice to get some short games in. I'm thinking about a Space Marine list but I'm not sure what to pick.
The rules are;
200 Points
Units:
0-1 Elite
0-2 Troops
0-1 Fast Attack

Deployment:
Spearhead, Seize the initiative

I have never played this before so I'm struggling a bit to come up with a competitive list. Any help is welcome.

I also thought it would be nice to field my Orks army. I only have 5 Nobz and a gretchin unit which together is 200 points so that will be fun to play in a little game. It's not going to be a tournament but just some short games over the day so people can play with different lists and armies. I don't think 5 nobs and 10 gretchin with Runtherd will have much of a chance but it's all about having fun.

Click to enlarge

It will be great to get the Orky feeling going and let everyone in my club know I'm starting a Waaagh. The only problem is that 4 out of my 5 Nobz are still not assembled and largely unpainted. So this week I set myself a goal of painting up the remaining 4 Orks. When you look at the picture you can see that I have started painting them a bit already but they are far from finished and I will be struggling for hobby time this week, that in combination with my desire for high detail will make it a real challenge to get them done in time.

Seb

Fantasy Friday: Maneater Paymaster

I always feel great posting Warhammer Fantasy stuff. You want to know why? Because it's Fantasy Friday of course and that means the end of the week is here!

Today I'm showing you an Ogre Kingdoms Maneater Paymaster. This is one of the 5 maneaters that are available and I have painted 4 of them. Last week I showed you the Pirate and I'm not sure what I'm going to do next week. Do you want to see more maneaters? They are great models full of detail. This maneater has again a Gnoblar on his shoulder counting on his abacus. I certainly had fun painting this for my client.

Well that's it for another fabulous Fantasy Friday,the sun is shining and the weekend nearby. I hope to get some hobby time again this weekend and I'll keep you posted on the progress.




Seb

Citadel Wood (or drybrush saturday)

Yesterday I had some painting time again. The wife was out and supposed to take our kid but he was a bit ill so I said he could stay with me. With absolutely nothing else to do I set out to get some things finished on the hobby front.

I first sat down with my drop pod and after setting everything up and getting ready my son started crying. (he's 6 months) so I got up and cuddled him for a bit until he was satisfied. Then onto the project again. I got about ten minutes of brush time before my son needed some attention again so there I went again. Now, he was in the same room so he could look at me and I was talking to him, my wife calls this brainwashing as I tell him anything about the 41st millennium he needs to know but I felt sorry for him so I went back and forth between my son and my paint station.

I finally realised that it wasn't going to work. I was doing small detail work on my pod but had to stop and get started so many times over that it felt like a chore rather then some nice hobby time. I looked at my cabinet and realised that the citadel wood set that had been sitting there undercoated for months was probably the right project for the moment.

I got out my large brushes and started drybrushing like a mad man. I wanted the old dead, haunted look for the trees and patches of grass on the floor to fit in with my table. just three hours later I was done and the glue of the foliage was drying. I had enough time with my son to give him his milk bottle, fruit, clean nappy and cuddles whilst the tree set got done.

The good thing was that the citadel wood set is easy to make it look good. it's just mindless drybrush work. My son was happy and I have another finished project that I can take off my list.

Everybody happy.

Seb

Game over Gamesworkshop: Rise of the MakerBots

Last week I was watching tv and saw something that made me think about the end of GW. Then yesterday I read an article by Dave from N++ and since then it kept me thinking of where we are heading. The article is called: Living in the future, get used to it. It basically shows us all to look at our lives and the products we use these days to make out lives easier. Things that we could only dream of say 15 years back. We are spoiled with new gadgets and nothing they seem to invent seems to impress us that much anymore.

But then last week I saw something that amazed me and truly had me thinking of the possibilities. Ladies and mostly gentlemen, I present to you the "MakerBot". If you haven't seen it yet I have included a little video at the bottom of this article for you.

The makerBot is nothing less then an actual printer for objects. In short, you can download a blueprint of any object and the Makerbot will make a 3D plastic object of that blueprint. The idea about it is that if you bought something and a part breaks you can contact the store and they will sent you the blueprint of that specific part and you can "print" it at home. Or you can go to the webshop of a company and buy the blueprint online which should be cheaper and a lot quicker.
So let say GamesWorkshop would adopt this technology in a couple of years. Then I would go to the webshop and download a box of Space Marines and I would be printing them only 5 minutes later at my home after paying for them with my PayPal. It will take about 10 minutes to create a whole squad of space marines.

But WAIT! It wouldn't be like that now would it. How many of us have gone online and downloaded some song illegally? How long would it take hackers to crack the blueprints and you could download those blueprints for free? Or how long would it take before they would invent an object scanner with which you could easily copy any objects and creating blueprints a thousands of times. And why would I stop "printing" my freshly bought Space Marines when I have a squad of 10? I could easily create 10 squads of 10 marines.

Technology like this will again change our future and how we consume products dramatically and I wonder if companies are already protecting themselves against this. Surely this would be the end for Gamesworkshop and any other miniature making company out there. We would spoil it all by illegally downloading the blueprints so we could put a 10.000 point army on the table for just a few bucks.

This machine is currently still an open source projects but already available for just under a thousand dollars. Quite an investment right now but if you would want to buy a plasma tv, mobile phone or high spec pc about 15 years ago you would have to take a second mortgage as well.

So how will this effect us, the mianature gamers? Game Over Gamesworkshop? Plz leave your comment below.




Seb

Fantasy Friday: Maneater Pirate

Ok, It's the end of the week again. I'm getting ready for the weekend and I have loads of painting time to look forward to. The stars have aligned in the exact right order for me to get 8 hours of unbothered painting tomorrow. Yeah baby!

This means that today is FANTASY FRIDAY! today I'm going to show you a commission i did about half a year ago. It's an Ogre kingdoms Maneater, the pirate that is. There are about 5 different maneaters available in the Ogre kingdom army and my client gave me 4 of those to paint.

So here's the first one in line. I went with nice and vibrant colors that contrast with the ogre's skin tone. It's full of detail and I think the Gnoblar on his shoulder dressed up as a parrot is a classic! I customized the base by using coffee stirring sticks to stay within the pirate theme.the picture is not the best quality but the model is nice enough for me as it is. Result, one very happy client.













Seb

Reorganising the Workspace

I wanted to post this yesterday but since that was the "Old Stuff Day" and I wanted to give as much publicity to my HeroQuest article I decided that my usual Wednesday WIP should be postponed 1 day.

Last week I had a look at my workspace and noticed that it had became somewhat cluttered with piles of plastic frames, painting pots, tools and all sorts of other hobby related clutter I decided it was time for some early spring cleaning. I took everything away and started reorganising. Here you can see the end result. I have a nice big desk of which half is used for my pc and printer and the other half for my painting hobby. My desk is right in front of the window for nice daylight aside from the two lights I have. 1 light for shining on my model when painting the other light on my palette so I can see if I mix up the right colors but I also use that for additional light on my model.

My paints are stored on the left and i keep them in particular order which I have done so since I started painting so I can blindly find any paint I need. There's nothing more frustrating then not being able to find the color you need. Keeping them in the same order saves a lot of time. This week I went to Ikea(more of that later) and I found some plastic thingy that they use to pack the photo frames with and I asked if I could have some because they just throw them out anyway. As you can see in the picture I use them to store my paint pots. I do that the same way as I had them before but the benefit of this is that they will always be in the same place. Normally they would end up budged and mixed up a bit and I had to take time to order them nicely again after a painting session. This was a great find and I'm really happy with it. (specially since it was free!)

On the right hand side I keep my painting palette since I'm right handed, seems obvious. I use an old bathroom tile and as you can see in this picture this one needs to be replaced. I have a lot of them so I just throw them out when they are done. Also take note of the mandatory cup of coffee. With my palette I also keep some old brushed for mixing up paint and light dry brush work and a paper towel to clean my brushes.

All my tools like clippers, files, scissors,knives, marker pens and a lot of old brushes together with a lot of other crap is stored in a container straight in front of me. You can also see I keep a toothbrush in there, I use that to clean my models after scraping off mold lines. It's hard enough to give them a good scrub and clear all plastic shavings that stick to the model so I can prime them without having to worry that there's still plastic shavings and bits of plastic or glue residue on them.You can also see my 5 euro cents container in the picture. I always glue a coin to the bottom of my bases(they fit perfectly). This keeps the model standing up so you can't knock them over that easily. I have another topic on that for you here.Of course also some glue and my last bit of greenstuff. (note to self: get more GS)

Those of you who had a close look at the top picture might have noticed two cups standing on my desk. I keep two cups of water to rinse my brushes but the one with the big "M" on it is used solely for rinsing after painting with metallics and the other is used for regular paints. When you're painting with metallics there's always some paint that stays in your brush and when you rinse your brushes all in one cup you will see that some metallics will float on top of your rinsing water so if you dip your brush in again it will stick to your brush. Metallics are a pain so i use 2 brushes, 1 for metallics and 1 for regular paints. So therefor it's good to also get two rinsing cups. I put a big M on it so i don't accidentally rinse my brush in the wrong cup.

So, I already told you I went to Ikea. I picked up another nice display cabinet. I could really use about 4 of these to display all my painted miniatures. Maybe I will go back again soon to pick up another one but for now it will do. These are really nice cabinets, easy to put together and dirt cheap compared with other cabinets out there. The only thing is that my hobby room is on the third floor and these things weigh a ton and are made of glass so you have to be careful getting them home.

So this was something different then the normal "Wednesday WIP"but I hope you enjoyed your peek at my workspace.I better not show you my hobby closet as it's cram packed with sprues,boxes and old unfinished projects.

 I did get some painting done last week but i didn't take any pictures so I'll just move that to next week's edition.



Seb

Old Stuff day: HeroQuest

HeroQuest Box

Today is old stuff day and ofcourse I'd like to contribute some of my content but the oldest content on this blog is only 3 months old so I had to think hard and deep to come up with something good. I went back in my memory to what was my first encounter with miniature gaming and games workshop. So let me take you back to the year 1989 when I was a young snotling only 13 years of age. Back then me and some guys in my neighbourhood spent a whole winter indoors playing HERO QUEST!

For many of the somewhat older gamers this was the first introduction of miniature gaming of a whole new level. The game was exciting, crampacked with miniatures and cool scenarios to play out. We didn't paint the minaitures but came up with some whacky scenarios of our own when we finished all the scenarios from the rulebook.
Somehow those days of HeroQuest feded in my memory untill about 3 years ago when I stumbled upon a box at a second hand store and I picked it up for only €10,-. It was all complete and hardly played with so I had some fun playing and painting it but it didn't feel the same as when I was only 13. Isn't growing up a bitch!

HeroQuest Boardgame

Hero Quest is a fantasy board game created by Stephen Baker in 1989, produced by Games Workshop and distributed by MB, Hasbro Int. Today the English division of Hasbro is the only proprietor of HeroQuest trademark because Games Workshop has sold all material of HeroQuest (figures, images, etc...) to Hasbro on 30 April 1993. The game is outside production since 1993, but it still counts a lot of fans all over the world.

Gameplay:
The game consisted of a board and a number of individual miniatures and items. The protagonists were 4 heroes ("Barbarian", "Dwarf", "Elf" and "Wizard") who faced a selection of monsters:Orcs, Goblins, Fimir, Chaos Warriors, a Chaos Warlock (which represented many of the named characters for the various quests), a Gargoyle and a number skeletons, zombies and mummies.The game is played on a grid representing the interior of a  of Undead—dungeon or castle, with walls segmenting the grid into rooms and corridors. One player assumes the role of the evil wizard character (Zargon/Morcar), and uses a map taken from the game's quest book to determine how the quest is to be played. The map details the placement of monsters, artifacts, and doors, as well as the overall quest the other players are embarking upon. Quests vary and include scenarios such as escaping a dungeon, killing a particular character, or obtaining an artifact.

The cover of the magazine White Dwarf number 90 of june 1987, shows the design of the dwarf (John Sibbick's work), used for the character in the base set of Hero Quest, in 1989.

I have painted up my dwarf from the game about three years ago. I wasn't a real star in painting eyes then but I'm showing you this so you can compare the model to the White dwarf(90) cover art.








Now for some real sentimental value here's the original tv commercial.

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now I couldn't have written this article without the help of the unofficial heroquest site, you can find a link to the site on the left side of my blog and Wikipedia.

Seb