Gallows Grove

Privateer Press makes really nice figures and models, but they can be expensive. I've been eyeing their Gallows Grove for quite a while now, and was able to get a pack in a recent sale - still cost quite a bit though.

It's a beautiful model, if a little hard to put together and paint. I don't think I got the glowing sigils effect, but I guess I can always go back and re-do that if I get better at it.

Veteran Beastmen or Tharn Ravager Whitemanes

I like my beastmen.

They are a sort of an "accidental army".

I started out buying a few leader type figures just because they looked good, and then added some GW beastmen fg had lying around to build them into a couple of units for our Strandhogg games. Before too long they are slated to do triple duty as Fomorians in our planned OGAM project, as well as Tharn Ravagers in Warmachines/Hordes.

The latest addition are these two Reaper beastmen woodcutter figures with heads from GW beastmen Gor.

As you can see from the second picture, they are about the size of the GW Gors, but hairier and leaner.

The reason why I painted them with white hair on the top half of their bodies is because I wanted them to represent Tharn Ravager Whitemanes, who are veterans under the rules.

Tharn Ravager Whitemane. Picture from the-outpost.co.uk

Well, there is some resemblance...

 

I didn't want to paint them completely white because I thought they would look weird, so I googled around and found some pictures of Fannin Sheep, which have white hair on their necks and heads - the other beastmen in my army are painted like Big Horn sheep, you see.

Fannin sheep. Photo from anne_shaw.tripod.com

With two Whitemanes, I can field a "themed" force under the Hordes rules, which gives certain bonuses, which is of course all rather irrelevant at this point in time since we haven't even layed a single game. I just wanted an excuse to get the Reaper figures, really...

A Clash of Pantheons, and Three Warbands for the price of One plus some

As promised, here are my two OGAM warbands.

Balor leads the Fomorians against Thor and the dwarves.

It looks like quite a lot of figures for a set of rules that has not even been released, but really I have only added the two god figures to arrive at this.

The dwarves I have had for the longest time, and only Thor needed to be added for them to be a full OGAM warband.

The Fomorians are mainly my beastmen force. Configured for Strandhogg they look like this:

One beastlord with two warbands, each with a Wargor leader, 3 Ungor skirmishers, and 5 Gor warriors.

By adding a Hordes Skorne Cyclops Shaman as Balor, a Hasselfree Ceril as Bres, a beastman female shaman as some sort of priestess, I have an OGAM warband.

Balor, Bres, a priestess, a couple of beastmen heroes, a melee unit, and a missile unit.

Finally, with the addition of a minotaur and a barbarian figure, I get a legal Hordes Circle Orboros themed warband:

Kromac in his human form with his beastman form behind, minotaur as Ghetorix proxy, Gamezone troll as a Gorax, two Tharn Ravager units of 4 figure each, one with a Chieftain and one with a Shaman, two beastmen heroes as Tharn Whitemanes, and the Ungors as a Tharn Blood Pack.

So there they are. Three warbands for two sets of rules I haven't even tried before.

Time to take a break from figure-painting and do some terrain work next.

Warmachine/Hordes Explained

Gaspez Minotaur complete

At Matt's urging, I decided I push on and complete the Gaspez minotaur.

I think the contrast in the skin tone is mostly due to the lighting - I learnt that it's really quite hard to paint something black under artificial light; I'll have to look at the model again tomorrow to see how it looks like under sunlight.

My favourite view of the model, showing its eye and the curve of its horns.

And here is is posing next to Kord, who will be the warlock for my Hordes Circle Orboros warband. Kord will proxy as Kromac, and the minotaur will be Ghetorix, a giant werewolf who wields an equally giant axe.

Gasthorix and Kormac?

I am now waiting for the arrival of the Reaper figure I plan to paint as Thor for my Norse dwarf faction, as well as a figure I plan to use as Balor...

WIP 4: Gaspez Minotaur AND Kord completed

No game today, which allowed me (and hopefully the rest of the gang too) to get some painting done.

I'm having some trouble getting the minotaur secured onto its base, but here's a teaser of his eye:

I quite like the look.

I did manage to complete Kord the barbarian, which together with my beastman warchief will proxy as the human and beastman forms of Kromac.

Incidentally, Kord was sculpted by Tre Manor, whose Red Box Games dwarves I love. I ordered a dozen dwarven footmen from his latest kickstarter

Finally, here's the hawk from a Reaper Animals pack which I got for the bear.

 I'm not sure why I decided to paint it. I guess it can be a scenery item or an objective marker.

WIP 3: Gaspez Minotaur

Happily, the resin bases I ordered arrived in the mail today, allowing me to complete my project.

I whittled the putty on the axe shaft to the diameter of the original, and then smoothed it with a file. A couple of drill holes in the resin base, and this is the final product.

I hope to get the model primed and painted over the next two weeks, before my Dystopian Wars Ottoman fleet arrives.

WIP 2: Gaspez Minotaur and Kord the Destroyer

The Warhammer Minotaur arms and weapons bits that I ordered arrived in the mail today, allowing me to do the next step in my conversion project.

The arms of the Gaspez minotaur are further apart than those on a Warhammer minotaur, so I had to extend the shaft of the axe. To ensure that I have a strong structure, I cut off the middle section of the piece, drilled holes in both ends, and then fitted a steel wire in between. I then applied epoxy to the wire, inserted it into the two pieces, then blu-tac'd the hands onto the main model itself. The telescoping nature of the construct allowed me to adjust the alignment of the two pieces while the epoxy set to ensure that the shaft ended up straight.

The end product was rather long, so I snipped a bit off the end of the shaft, which still gave an eventual length of 7cm, or more than twice the height of a man in scale!

Once the epoxy has set, I needed to build some "meat" around the wire skeleton to match the rest of the shaft with epoxy putty. Rather than sculpting the shaft while the putty is soft, I decided it might be easier to just form a sausage around the skeleton and then shave it down later when it has hardened. I'll let you know how that works out later...

The hands needed a bit of bulking up too.

Also in the package today was the Reaper mini Kord the Destroyer. I got it because I wanted to use my beastman warchief as Kromac in Hordes. Now Kromac is a warlock who has a human form and a beastman form, which meant I needed a human form of my warchief. Using Reaper's Figure Finder, I found and bought Kord, the original form which is shown below.

When the figure arrived, I found that the axe was comically smaller than the one held by my warchief. Well, it can't all be perfect.

I removed all the spikes on the figure, shaved the letter M off his buckle, and decided to take off the nicked dagger in his right hand. The axehead was bent almost 180 degrees onto the shaft when the figure arrived, so I snapped it off and drilled through it, his left hand, then replaced the shaft with a length of wire such that the eventual length of the whole weapon would be the same as the axe held by the warchief, then applied putty to it too.  I also bent the arm at the elbow a little and turned the axehead so it is orientated in a more natural angle so the axis of the blade is in line with the axis of his forearm, and anchored the end of the shaft onto his cloak for stability. It is only now when I am typing this that I realised that I could have placed the axe in Kord's RIGHT hand to better mirror the warchief figure; well, too much trouble to switch it now. Grr.

I epoxied the figure onto a 25mm square base (as the warchief), and then puttied over the integral base on the model and added a piece of cork for terraining.

So when Kromac transforms into his beast form, his axehead also miraculously enlarges, and he turns from being left-handed to being right-handed? Seems legit.

Now to wait for the putty to set overnight. Hopefully the base which I ordered for the minotaur arrives tomorrow and I can move on to the next and final step of the conversion project.

WIP: Gaspez Minotaur

I don't usually do WIP posts, but the latest model to arrive in my mail is such a neat model, I thought I just had to.

Now I've been looking for a minotaur figure to go with my beastmen force for a while now. It's proven to be quite difficult because it had to have the right head, the right 'clothes', right weapon, right size, and the right price.

When I decided recently to add a few figures to my beastmen to allow me to field them as a Fomorian warband and a Circle Orboros warband in the not-to-distant future, I decided I have to decide.

My choice is this Chaos Minotaur from Gaspez, made for Blood Bowl or other fantasy American football games, and shown here in its original 'green' form.

The head isn't really my "ideal" head for a minotaur - I refer one that is more like a real bull's head - but I really like the horns. The hands come loose, which means I can (and plan to) graft the hands and two-handed axe from a GW minotaur to it. The simple style of his 'dress' fits with the look of my beastmen, which is important for me. It also for some strange reason has Balor's eye on its belt, which sort of sealed the deal for me.

The figure is 6cm tall when assembled, and comes in 9 parts: a head, two horns, the torso, the shoulder plate, two hands, the lower half of the body, and a tail. There are two options for the horns, a pincer-claw and a tentacles option for the hands, and a rear loincloth flap option for the tail.

What is neat about this model is how the parts are "dovetailed" to give a snug fit so you can put it together without pinning. The horns have notches in them that fit to the top of the ears so they not only point in the correct attitude, but are also symmetrical. The tail fits into the butt in a squarish rather than round peg so it orientates the correct way. There is also a large peg on the right hoof of the model, which will help me secure it to a resin base. All in all it is a model designed to make it easy for you to assemble.

In assembling my model I nonetheless decided to make some changes to it.

First of all I decided I would discard the shoulder plate, which has too much of a Blood Bowl feel to it, and sculpt the strap so that it goes completely around the (now bare) shoulder - fortunately for me the sculptor did sculpt the shoulder under the plate. The shoulder plate will go into my bits box and perhaps one day "convert" a non-Blood Bowl figure to a Blood Bowl figure.

I also decided that the tail, while looking dynamic, is really just an accident waiting to happen for a wargames model. In addition, it makes the model hard to store in my newly-made sponge tray. So I clipped the connecting part and positioned it so it has a three-point contact to the model.

Finally, I extended the mane running down the back of the minotaur to its forehead - when I googled about the auroch and Spanish fighting bulls while thinking about a colour scheme I learnt that most bulls have a sort of a forelock.

This is how my model looks so far:

The assembled model, waiting for hands and weapon and a base.

View showing the sculpted forelock and strap.

Detailed view of the direction of the horns. Note also the good detail of the teeth.

Rear view showing how I glued the tail with a three points of contact for more stability.

I now have to wait for the arrival of the hands and weapon bits, as well as a 50mm round base before I can continue the project. Hopefully that will be some time within the next two weeks.