Kromlech Giant Mushrooms and GW Night Goblin Fanatics

I got a few packs of giant mushrooms from Kromlech a while back to decorate the bases of my Night Goblin army, but have not done anything with the larger mushrooms until now; Adrian had finished painting his Dwarven army during the lockdown period, and was keen to play a game of Kings of War 3rd edition, so I decided to make some objective markers.

I pinned the mushrooms onto some resin bases I have, slopped some paint on the mushroom caps, and dry-brushed the bases green - the end result looks like aquarium decoration. 

Next, I decided to refurbish a couple of Night Goblin Fanatics figures I bought on eBay. Night Goblin Fanatics are one of the things that made me fall in love with GW (the other thing was when I first found out that in Blood Bowl, you could make a Treeman throw a Halfling - that just blew my teenage mind), but the problem with the older, metal figures was that the chains had a tendency to snap - and that was what happened with these two figures.

The little fellow on the left started life being almost vertical, with his feet pointed straight up to the sky - this was of course an accident waiting to happen, and it did. I glued the chain back onto the ball, but I was certain that if I tried to restore the figure in its original configuration, it would break again. Looking at the shape of its hood, I decided to position it in a more horizontal position and make it look like the ball had pulled him forward in a headlong dive. To achieve a two-point contact, I inserted a pin onto the base, and attached the end of the chain to the pin, and then hid the pin with some tuft. I like how the goblin's right hand just hovers a few millimetres above the ground, giving it a dynamic look.

The need for a two-point contact meant that I had to use a base that was larger than the 25mm round base. (There are no rules for Fanatics in the KOW goblin list, but the goblins do have an "extra attacks on first melee attack of the game" mechanic in the form of Mawpups, which I thought could be proxied by the Fanatics.) A 40mm round base was just a tad too small for the figure, and a 50mm base would have had too big a footprint; a standard rectangular cavalry base would do the trick, but I felt that the right angles did not look right for a figure that was supposed to be in motion. Fortunately, I had a few oval bases from the Fireforge skeleton cavalry box, which was just the right size.

For the other figure, I had to replace the broken chain with a piece of plastic chain I had from my bits box. To secure the figure to the base, I trimmed the tab on its bottom, and cut a rectangular slot on the base to receive the tab. To achieve a two-point contact, I glued the ball to the base. The figure now looked like it was trying to launch the ball off from the ground. To add to that effect, I thinned the PVA in the area of the arc which I imagined the ball would trace before I added the basing material, and painted the area a darker brown to simulate the wet earth that was exposed by the movement of the ball. The oval shape of the base added to the look of the whole thing. In retrospect I should have actually scraped a groove into the base itself, adding more depth to the groove.

I had a lot of fun working on these two figures. Maybe I should look for more old Fanatic figures on eBay to restore...

Black Tree Design Nightlings

After a long hiatus, I am proud to announce that I have completed the nine BTD Nightlings I have bought for the purpose of creating another unit of squig herders, which will serve as Maw Beasts under the Kings of War rules.

I really love the facial expressions and the animation in these figures, as well as the little details like earrings and bangles the goblins are wearing.

As you can see in the picture above, a similar colour scheme allows them to blend in with the GW figures. The Maw Beasts are supposed to be on cavalry-sized bases, but in KOW, it is only the unit footprint that is important, so I am using a 6 x 5 20mm figures, which have the same footprint.

The GW goblins have different skin tones because they came from different lots I bought on ebay. But we don't discriminate in this army.

In this picture you can see the dice holders which I have added to the movement tray, as well as the green dice I bought especially for this army, which will be used as casualty trackers.

Next on the painting list are 12 War Haggises followed by a unit of 21 BTD dwarf warriors.

Perry WOTR Light Cavalry and my entire WOTR/(The) Empire Army

The Perry WOTR Light Cavalry have been sitting in a tub for almost two years, but I finally started and finished painting them in the past three days.

I assembled them in two fashion, half of them as mounted crossbows.

And three with lances, and three as command figures.

The leader rides a horse from Claymore Castings. The glue is still drying on the base of the last figure.

With these figures done, I can say that I have completed my WOTR/Warhammer (The) Empire army.

The problem, of course, is that the Warhammer (The) Empire no longer exists. Nor does the whole Warhammer world. Not that that will prevent us from playing Warhammer 8th Edition, seeing how we already have figures for at least four armies. I do like the Warhammer rules, especially the fancy army lists, but on the whole I find them hard to remember, given how rarely we play them.

I have been looking at alternative sets of fantasy mass combat rules for a while, and last week I decided to order a copy of Mantic's Kings of War 2nd Edition rules. The reviews I have seen praise the rules for their simplicity, which is a plus for me, but I do worry if the army lists are different enough to distinguish each army. I guess we'll find out when the rules arrive in a week or two.

Black Hat Dwarf Town Guard Crossbow

Here are the Black Hat Miniatures dwarven crossbowmen I painted for Adrian. The bases are unflocked so he can do them in the same style as the rest of his army.

These are some of the easiest figures to paint. The crossbow and the hands come in a separate piece from the torso, so I was able to prime them in two colours: black for the torso with all the metal, and brown for the hands and crossbow. The torso was then dry-brushed with silver, the face, hair and beard, sleeves, belt and scabbard, and feet hand-primed with red-brown or just painted over with the shade of brown I chose to represent leather, then the face and hair done. For the hands and crossbow part the hands are painted over the brown paint, and the bow itself left as is, with the metal parts picked out in black primer and then silver. Once the parts are glued together, I washed the non-silver parts with brown wash.

They are a little too large for a 20mm square base, so to make them rank up I set the rear rank closer to the rear of the base - this shouldn't be an issue as missile troops are unlikely to be deployed deeper than two ranks.

Again, these are a breeze to paint, and if you need a ton of dwarven crossbows for your army, they are the guys for you. It's a pity the range is so small, or I would be tempted to buy more.

Mountain of lead, plastic, resin, and MDF

I haven't been posting to much this year, but I have been spending time prepping figures and models for painting.

These are what are on my painting desk right now: two packs of Zen Terrain Conversion Kit and a bridge pack. some sci-fi utility poles which I scratch-built using parts from suction wall hooks, inter-dental brush caps, plastic toy parts, and faux leather cords, a cheap plastic M1117 which I have converted with Tamiya and Kromlech bits, 20 Black Hat Miniatures dwarven crossbowmen, and a tub of (remianing) 37 Warzone Imperial Regulars.

Apart from the dwarves, these are all part of the sci-fi shanty town/Blast Pistol project which I plan to make the focus of the next few months. I have also ordered two more packs of Battle Systems' Shanty Town cardboard terrain.

I will post pictures of the stuff as they are completed, but here are some comments about them.

The Zen Terrain stuff are excellent, and come pre-cut and with clear instructions on assembly. They fit well and are easy to assemble with just some white glue, except for the turbines, which took a bit of fiddling. The bridge in particular is very well-designed, and fit perfectly with the Battle Systems buildings. I simply sprayed these with beige or grey paint, and will do some simple weathering and wash on them before spraying a matt varnish and calling it a day. I haven't got anything to put on the billboards though, so if you know of any appropriate posters and whatnot, do let me know.

The utility poles are the result of some scrounging around stores and drawers. There are commercially available sci-fi streetlights and such, but I wanted the messy, exposed cables - I believe the key to creating a cramped, shanty town feel to the tabletop is to introduce horizontal components to the terrain.

The M1117 came out of a bag of cheap toys. I drilled holes for the hook rings, added some grab bars using bent paperclips, and an antenna made of a length of thick wire and drilled-through plastic rods. The toy had the jerry cans on the sides sculpted on in low relief; I thought about filing them off or covering them up with stowage, but fortunately fg had some 1/35 Tamiya jerry cans which come in halves, and it was a simple job then of gluing half a jerry can to each and making a rack out of paperclip for them. The twin-mini-gun and the wheels come from Kromlech. The wheels come without a hub cap, so I used the landmines from my Tamiya M20 kit to cover up the holes in the centre. I have yet to decide which faction this vehicle will be assigned to, and what colour indeed to paint it. Suggestions are welcome.

The Black Hat dwarves are very nice, and come with separate hands-and-crossbow which will make the painting much easier. They do look like they will be hard to rank up in two rows on 20mm square bases though.

As you can see that's quite a lot of stuff and it will take me several weeks to complete. Stay tuned.

Skaven Chieftain

I have been trying to get a cheap, single stormvermin standard bearer figure to use as a Battle Standard Bearer since Thomas asked me to find him one, but they tend to be expensive and not sold as singles.

Then I came upon this Games Day shaken chieftain which looks quite the part.

The figure is actually rather strange. His one good eye is looking to the rear, and the way he is holding his weapon and standard means that if you faced the standard to the front, he cannot rank up with other figures. And then his knee armour seem to be sewn to a skirt?

Still, with him done we are one step closer to fielding a skaven army. Hopefully that happens before the whole Warhammer world implodes...

Night Goblins

I still lack the squig hoppers by fg, and will be replacing some of the spearmen from the squig herder unit with official herders (and maybe more clubbers) figures, but this is the bulk of the 2000 point All Night Goblin army I have cobbled together.

30% of the figures are Adrian's and the rest all second-hand figures bought off ebay and then refurbished or (for a few) repainted. I will need to do up some uniform-looking movement trays for the smaller units. but I think the bulk of the work is done.

Perhaps some Night Goblin-themed terrain pieces next?

Squigs!

One of the two things that make a night goblin army so irresistible to me are the squigs. The squig models from GW can be expensive though, so I decided to use the 'War Haggises' from Black Hat Miniatures as a substitute. They look like a cross between GW squigs and the jib jib from Steve Jackson's Sorcery!

A jib jib, apparently Steve Jackson's favourite creature in all his Fighting Fantasy books.

I have also used 'normal' night goblins as herders instead of the official herder miniatures.

With this unit completed, my All-Night Goblin army is ready save for a unit of squig hoppers fg will be painting. Once I get the movement trays made I will pose them for a group shot.

Next up are a unit of 40 clanrats to refurbish...

Night Goblin Fanatics

One of the things that makes a Night Goblin army so much fun is of course the fanatics. I am putting together an All-Night Goblin army (that's an army made up of night goblins, not an army of goblin that goes on throughout the night...) just so that I can field these little bundles of craziness.

And the squigs.

So two; two of the things that make a Night Goblin Army...

I am almost done with the army now - I've refurbished about 170 figures and will be painting some Black Hat Miniatures War Haggis to use as squigs. Combined with the Night Goblins Adrian has painted and the Squig Riders that fg is going to paint, I should have 2000 points there.

Next on the list will be another 40 skaven clanrats to refurbish (I know I said I wouldn't...), then hopefully after them I will be painting the WOTR Light Cavalry by Perry.

Grey Seer

Here is the last of the skaven figures I have and plan to paint. I am still looking for a nice figure to use as a Battle Standard Bearer, but other than that, I am done with skavens for now. This figure, like many of the older metal figures, was a delight to paint.

The next project in line is the refurbishment of a unit of 50 Night Goblins, which should see me to the arrival of the Perry WOTR Light Cavalry.

Claymore Castings Crossbowmen

I know I say this a lot, but these are some of the best-sculpted figures I own. They are the French crossbowmen recently released by Claymore Castings, which has become my "company to watch". There are 3 packs of 4 figures in this release, so I bought them all. The detail and animation on these figures are just amazing, as is the engineering. The "cross-piece" (bow and bowstring) comes in a separate piece, and as you can see some bows are drawn, some are not, and some have quarrels in them... which means each piece is specific to a figure! At least one of the pieces had the tip of the quarrel on the bow piece, and the shaft on the stock, and one had the hand on the bow piece! And the thing is, everything fits together so well, I bet you can't tell which figure had which combination.

The pavises are from the Perry WOTR European mercenaries box set.

Here are the figures shown separately. About half of them must have played Skyrim, because they are wearing some form of knee armour.

I show the last figure separately, because it is probably my favourite of the lot; check it out: he is holding a crossbow bolt in his teeth!

The next release from Claymore Castings is Hundred Years War knights, which I may not get; but I will be keeping an eye for figures I can use.

The next purchase for this army is likely to be the WOTR light horse box set from Perry, which will be released at Salute this year. After those my army may be considered "complete". I think.

Warhammer Fantasy Spell Markers

I am not a big fan of magic in my fantasy wargames, and my Empire army doesn't even have a wizard. I do field a Warrior Priest though, and he has prayers which he can use to either increase his unit's attack strength or its defence. It can sometimes be hard to remember which one is effect during a turn, so I made a couple of markers for them.

They are just spare bits from my bits box, glued to a plastic 20mm base and painted in monochrome.

Shield of Faith and Hammer of Sigmar

I wanted to make something for my Night Goblin army too, which does have a few shamans (because they can't survive without a few). I assume the spell I will use most often is Sneaky Stabbin', but instead of using just bit of a weapon I decided to use a spare goblin figure I had.

Perhaps I should have based him on a round base to make him stand out, but on a square base he can be used in a unit in case I needed an extra figure.

D&D Stone Giant Elder repaint

The rules for giants in Warhammer are quite fun, and so I wanted to paint one up for Adrian's Orcs and Goblins army; problem is, the official model is expensive.

After some googling, I got myself a D&D Stone Giant Elder which I did a minimal conversion on to end up with the fellow pictured above. I swapped his head for that of a Warhammer Ogre, and also cut the top half of his soft, curved club and grafted the hard plastic club from the Warhammer Ogre sprue.

Getting the flesh paint done on such a large figure was not easy - I needed several coats before I had an even finish. It also took me a while to decide what colours to paint his clothes. In the end I decided they were mainly leather and fur, and that he used part of a medieval tournament tent as his belt, and the kilt and bucklers from an unfortunate Scotsman for the top half of his... well, top.

One problem with buying the prepainted D&D figures online is that there is usually no indication of the size of the model. Fortunately, this model is just the right height for a Warhammer giant, being 7.5cm from sole to top of his (swapped) head, and would be 10cm if measured he was standing straight.

You can get an idea of his size from the picture below, which shows the 5cm x 7.5cm base I glued him on.

Plague monks done

The three metal figures I ordered arrived and I managed to complete the unit.

The next figure to be painted is a giant, and following that will probably be the new crossbowmen figures from Claymore Castings which I just ordered last night (along with 4 more pikemen to bring my unit of pikes to a horde).

Goblins of the night...

What a din they make!

Here are two of the hordes of Night Goblins I have refurbished.

As with the skavens, I have bought them mostly painted off ebay and will be organising them into units. Night Goblins are probably one of the most uniformly painted Warhammer armies since they are always dressed in black and have, well, green skins (although I have seen pictures of them painted to look like Smurfs...), so it is rather easy to integrate figures painted by different painters into a single army; I am also lucky that the previous owners have used a similar scheme for their basing, so hopefully with uniform movement trays they will look like a cohesive force.

I have bought enough Night Goblin figures that, together with the ones Adrian owns, will allow me to field a 2000-point all-Night Goblin army, which I think looks pretty cool. I have more than a hundred of these little guys to go, which will probably keep me busy for the next few months.

fg came over for a game of Blood Bowl this afternoon. We played to a draw again - it seems our two teams are rather evenly matched.

After the game we finished watching the John Woo movie. It has a really hilarious ending, which I won't spoil for you - but if you are looking for a silly movie to watch over the year-end holiday season that is "so bad it is good", I once again recommend it.

You can find it on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHliqlsig90

Plague monks

Some pics of the unit of plague monks I am painting:

I placed the leader and standard bearer on broken stone slabs so I could use the Army Painter ivy that I bought.

A unit filler base using the crew from a Screaming Bell set converted to take hand weapons, plus a plague monk holding a scroll.

I've got 21 more figures to go. Slow and steady does it, I suppose...

Real Steel

It took a while, but I now have a horde of Greatswords painted.

They are a mix of Perry plastics and metals, old Grenadier figures, and a Trent Miniatures figure. Fielded in the above configuration this single unit is almost 800 points - 40% of a 2000 point army.

I based 14 of the figures on multi-bases, which will make it easier to deploy the unit, and also allowed me to decorate one of the bases with a broken lance.

With this unit done, I have to wait for Perry to release their plastic light cavalry and Claymore Castings to release their new crossbowmen.

Meanwhile, I am working on a unit of skaven plague monks, which are not as nice sculpts as the clanrats, but are at least easy to paint.

Battle Standard Bearer

As with the Warrior Priest, I decided to paint a new figure for my Battles Standard Bearer.

This figure is made from the Perry Foot Knights box, with the left hand drilled through and a steel pike added. The flag is custom-made by Maverick Models (not to be confused with Maverick Models).

Warrior Priest

On of the most fun characters one can field in a Warhammer (The) Empire army is the warrior priest. I have previously used a generic leader figure for my warrior priest, but I decided to paint two dedicated figures to represent the character when I got my box of Perry Foot Knights.

The two figures above are made up of the torso and arms from the Perry Foot Knights box, with the shield coming from the European Mercenaries box. The heads are from the Gripping Beast Dark Age Warriors box set, which I got on a bits trade. I thought the bald and bearded look made the figure look distinctive, especially once I gave him flaming hair. The "traditional" Warhammer warrior priests comes bald wearing a circlet and shaven, so my version looks more like a priest of Ulric, but no matter.

I made two versions of the same character because I have two "builds" for him: one for leading my Greatswords when my general is mounted, and one to lead my unit of swordsmen if my general is on foot (and leading the Greatswords himself); a third option is to field him and the general with the Greatswords in one single unit, which looks excessive.

I now have another 20-plus foot knights to go through, including the Battle Standard Bearer - hopefully I can complete him this weekend.

Mirliton Handgunners

With all the non-human units I have been painting for the rest of the gang, I thought I needed to restore balance to the Warp by painting up the Mirliton Handgunners (or Fighting Men with Guns in the Forlorn Hope catague and Harquebusiers in the Mirliton catalogue) I bought along with the Halfling archers.

As you can see, these come in 5 different poses, with handguns that look rather different too - which makes me wonder: historically, did handgunners have the same "model" of guns?

Here you can see them poses with my Perry plastic handgunners. The Mirliton figures are smaller than their Perry counterparts, but because of their stances they blend in quite well.

I have been thinking about giving my army a more "pike-and-shot" doctrine, so these are a useful addition. I should be getting my Perry foot knights from Martin tomorrow, which will let me bulk my Greatswords up to a horde of 40. Thereafter I hope to buy a dozen crossbowmen from Claymore Castings when their new figures are released. Stay tuned.