The City of Lead: Change of Plans

Hello all. If you can recall, Chico, Steve, Paul and I are planning a game of Mordheim at the next BOYL event next July. We are challenged with producing a single model each month to create our warband and a piece of scenery. I chose to work with a Kislevite warband inspired by the two Russian looking models recently cast up by Foundry. 

And here is the next model in that would be warband. 

He was a bit of a struggle to complete if I'm honest. I found getting the face looking reasonable a bit of a tough call. I am still not quite happy with the result but it will do. I am much more satisfied with the way his armour turned out, especially the golden scale mail. Long term readers will know that I have been working on this particular colour and metal in general in recent months. 

I am very pleased with the green material of the chap's cloak/coat however. I like the deep yellowy green I have achieved here and it's closeness to the iconic Bilious Green in colour. I am also quite happy with the dry brushing and blending on the wolf pelt. So big thrills for Noddy all the way round.

What I am not happy with is my warband choice. This is the result of several things. Firstly, Warlord Paul has already got in with both of these models for his warband (he hopes to paint all of the Time Warped wizards for the project) and one thing I hate are multiple examples of the same miniature on the table, unless it is for rank and file. As there are no rank and file models in Mordheim, this is going to pose a problem. Secondly, I hate Kislev. They bore me to death. 

Subsequently, I have chosen to begin again. Afresh. In the hopes of rekindling my enthusiasm for this little project and I have decided to switch from Kislev to skaven. Now the way I see it, I will need to produce four (count 'em) models over November to catch up with the other boys in the team. A model for August, September, October and November itself. 

No mean feat. 

Right, I better get cracking! 

Oldhammer Weekend 2016: A Tale of Four Oldhammer Gamers Battle

Battle reports can be deathly dull. As anyone who has seen Red Dwarf's 'Meltdown' episode (and Rimmer's Risk story) will attest, the recount of dice rolls and tactical movement hardly make interesting or worthwhile reading. As I said before, I took part in a single game during the Oldhammer Weekend and that was on the Sunday morning with the rest of the Tale of Four Oldhammer Gamers crew - namely Chico, Steve and Paul.

As you can see from the opening image, Chico was in a typically restrained mood and spent some careful moments setting out his horde of hobgoblins. They certainly looked very impressive, with their abundance of grey, the mass of near identical bases drawing the force together in a nice coherent whole. You may not know this, but our Chico is a prize-winner with his armies, often picking up awards at tournaments and whatnots. Alas, it was not to be for him at this particular event.

Warlord Paul brought along his undead and as they seemed most suitably matched with my undead, we joined forces. Looking over his models made me laugh, remembering the verb he coined earlier on in the year - namely 'warlording', or spending an incredibly long time painting a model who ends up looking rather unimportant.

When we could prize Steve Casey away from the Casting Room, he set up his unique Slann force across the table from me. Considering the short period of time the Citadel Collector has been painting models, his army looked bright and rather vigorous ranked up on our gaming table. You don't often get to see a decent sized Slann army and it was certainly a treat to play against one. Note must be made of his excellently poised giant spider (which you should just be able to make out to the rear of his line) and Mr. Casey has proven to be a highly skilled converter of models of late. I am looking forwards to seeing what he comes up with in future.

And yours truly, the author of this blog, and the Chaos Warband of Nurgle I have been working on over the past twelve months. Small but putridly formed!

The game got going after much faffing about with armylists and much flicking through rulebooks. Chico and Steve won the roll off and end up with the first turn. They moved forwards in a vague line towards Paul and my troops. Chico's massed ranks of hobgoblins looked a fearsome sight and I was glad I ended up facing off Steve's Slann as having fielded such a small force, being surrounded was a big, big concern. Chico has some choice models on the table - the Foundry giant troll thing almost being consumed by Mr Danks and the rare Temple Dog on the far right.

Here is the view from my table edge. An impressive force of Slann is always a pleasure to see, let alone face across the wargames table. I was very concerned that Steve's cold one riders would reach me quickly and smash my weaker troops off the table, though his Slann magician being carried aloft by his lobotomised slaves also worried me deeply. His magical attacks could cripple my army if used wisely.

Let's zoom in on Steve's army and take a closer look at what I faced.

Here we are. Slann, lizardmen and troglodytes - not to mention a giant spider and a unit of human warriors. A pokey little force weighing in just over 1000 points.

As Chico and Steve has opted to advance, Paul and I stood our ground, deciding that their forces would need to come to us. Chico has a hobgoblin rocket crew which looked dangerous if the dice gods held sway and Steve's magical prowess would also prove problematic if his Slann mage was not dealt with quickly.

Paul's undead were supported by a Skull Chucker. I hate these damn things when I have to face them, especially long range. I recall fighting a bit game one year when a triad of these things decimated by Khorne force at long range. His siege machine launched attacks against Chico's line as it advanced and I moved my plague cart alongside to give Paul's undead a little extra support.

Over the next couple of turns things looked pretty dire for me. Steve prepared to set up his cold one riders for a charge as his Slann mage peppered my chaos warriors with fireball spells. His first magical attack did three wounds and killed off one of my Nurgle warriors of Chaos. I was concerned that a powerful charge from his cavalry would destroy my key unit and push me out of the game.

Luckily, I had a couple of aces up my sleeve. I used my chaos sorcerer to send back fireball spells of his own, targeted against the cold one riders. My initial attacks did nothing, however. My second ace was the Plague Banner that cost me 100 points as each turn it could send a foul disease towards any unit in range, causing d6 wounds (and a further d6 wounds each subsequent turn) if a magic save is failed.

My first attack was catastrophic! Steve used his Slann mage's magic points to boost his resistance to the banner's evil magic and the attack resulted in 0 wounds. With his cold one riders looming large against me and a imminent cavalry charge probably only one turn away I was extremely concerned that the Citadel collector would destroy my best units early in the game. Nurgle's Cloud of Flies rule allowed be to hold the Slann mage at bay for a turn and prevent the relentless fireball attacks from reaching my chaos warriors.

With his magical attacks checked, Steve opted to position his cavalry in order to crush me as well as advancing his other troops. Thankfully for me, he didn't charge and I was able to launch one final Plague Banner attack on the cold ones. This attack was devastating and destroyed two of his models and causes the remaining riders to panic and rout. They fled straight into my beastmen and were hacked to pieces!!

What a superb result!

Steve didn't let up the pressure though. He advanced with his remaining infantry and used his giant spider to threaten my right flank. Over a couple of turns, his spider launched another attack at my chaos warriors but thankfully the magical attacks ceased. This was a critical point for Steve as my Plague Banner was a devastating magical weapon, though I sensed that for whatever reason he wasn't throwing everything he had at destroying it.

The spider was eventually dispatched with a few wounds to me and another plague was cast forth that destroyed his lobotomised human unit. This was a turning point in the battle. With so many of his units destroyed, Steve low lacked the forces to deal with my smaller force.

On my left flank, Chico's hobgoblin rocket crew was destroying Paul's skeleton units. The dead you can see here was from a single attack, causing Paul to use magic points to raise his skeletal warriors once again. A cheeky wind blast spell held Chico's giant in place, restricting the Garbage Pail Man's ability to attack with his rank and file. I have had similar things happen to me when using giants. You work so hard of painting the huge buggers up that you want them to have a glorious central place in your army. This makes them missile and magic magnets unfortunately, and Chico's big boy suffered.

The battle lines close. Chico begins to smirk chaotically after destroying yet more of Paul's undead forces.

Missile fire begins to destroy my plague skeletons as Steve positions his Slann and lizardmen for the charge.

The units collide and the ebb and flow of hand to hand fighting begins. But sadly, Chico's time with us has come to an end. The time now is late Sunday afternoon and people have trains to catch and places to be. We decide to end things were they were and the outcome of this match up will now never be known. Would Steve's forces have done enough damage to my warband to put it out of action? I think they certainly could.

In conclusion, it was a fabulous game. I really enjoyed the process of building up my warband and finally getting it used in a game. I have also got the beginnings of a 'proper' Nurgle army to join the ranks of my Khorne and Slaanesh force.

Nor is this the 'end' of the Tales of Four Oldhammer Gamers either, we have a new plan for next year! But more on that in a future post!

Orlygg.

A Tale of Four Oldhammer Gamers: May

Hello again dear readers. It has been some time since I last posted here (or anywhere in fact) I know, and things will remain sporadic at best over the next couple of months I am afraid. There is a great deal going on in my personal and working life at the moment and opportunities for Oldhammering are few and far between. Luckily, I was able to spend the entire day today (bar the time to complete the usual household chores) sitting at at a rather cramped and temporary painting station hopelessly daubing paint onto a couple of vintage Citadel models. 

The first of my endeavours to see completion was this rather nice Warrior Troll (check out this blogpost for more detail about troll typography) I have had in my collection for sometime. He had the misfortune to be undercoated and based some months previously, but I never quite managed to get beyond the 'picking him up and looking at him' stage. Wanting to tackle something 'big' (by this I mean easy) after a month or more away from the brushes, I decided to include him in my Nurgle army. 

Nurgle is a very forgiving master when painting. Dribbly bits, messy brushwork and peculiar blobbing all fit the Father of Flies' style perfectly, so the rusty painter is wonderfully supported when working on miniatures in his ilk. I used the some green recipe I have been mucking about with recently for the skin and used drybrushing and washing for the rest of the model. I was very pleased with the rust effect I achieved using a orange paint/chestnut ink wash but my dodgy photograph above doesn't really do it justice. 

This model will represent a minor troll hero in my army and will weigh in at 115 points. Despite the stupidity risk, trolls can do incredible damage in games and can of course regenerate too. Perfect attributes for a small, elite army like mine. The heavy plate and mail gives a better armour save than usual too. 

The second model I worked on came from an aborted Nurgle army I started three years or so ago. Originally, I was going to use this figure as part of a wider Nurgle force once A Tale of Four Oldhammer Gamers was over. However, my painting has moved on since he was completed and looked rather shocking in comparison with my more recent work. This came as a surprise really, as I had considered this figure's paint job one of my all time best. It was originally painted at a time I used a great deal of white to highlight models and this resulted in quite chalky, pale finishes rather than the inky brightness of my recent work. So, I decided to repaint him. Being pressed for time, I opted to just paint over the top of my earlier work rather than stripping him completely. I kept much of the original paint scheme too, though the skull, armour and flesh have all seen extensive reworking. 

He now fits in with my other Nurgle pieces very well. I unearthed another five poorly painted Bob Olley Nurgle beastmen alongside him too. These poor mutants have never even graced a gaming table as far as I can recall. They are now awaiting repainting in the near future. Well, relatively near future! Perhaps by the end of June?

Back on topic, this beastman will lead a unit of seven models and has been beefed up as a Pestigor Champion in heavy armour and wielding a double handed weapon. He weighs in at around 60 points by my reckoning and he brings my total to 175 points this month. 

Not bad for a day's work. 

Orlygg. 

A Tale of Four Oldhammer Gamers: April Part 2

It may be the closing hours of April, but I have managed to complete a further two models for my Nurgle Warband. Can you spot them in the photograph above? As you can see, I have finally got my act together and grouped together all of the models I have painted thus far int o single frame. They barely fit onto my tiny gaming board now, so future shots will have to be done on one of my McDeath boards!

I haven't yet given the warband any background, and the force is currently known as 'Nurgle Army. There aren't a great deal of models in it, are there? But such is the nature of old school chaos armies where a single model can cost in at around 100 points!

Here are the two new additions and as you can see they are both old Citadel chaos warriors from the 1980s. The model on the right is fairly nondescript really, and there are a number of variants of this model around. I would imagine that he would be a tad tricky to rank up in a large unit swinging that huge scimitar like that, but there was something about the pose that appealed to me. To help tie the model into the general Nurgle theme I used a pale green for his armour and fairly drab colours elsewhere on the model. Speed painting techniques helped bring him up to speed fairly rapidly this morning and despite the rush, he holds his own against the second model I have here, and she is everything but nondescript.

Female warriors are a rare sight in any wargames armies - for obvious reason, and though examples can be gleamed from the pages of history, in reality they were very, very few in number. I guess that is so in the quasi-historical world of '80s Warhammer too. This model has a rather odd history in my collection. I bought her years and years ago as part of a job lot but she was smeared with layers of black that no amount of Nitro-Mors could remove, so as you would imagine she languished at the bottle of a Dettol jar through most of the Oldhammer revolution. I rediscovered her recently and the many years she spent soaking in the stripper seemed to finally shift the black gunk. Upon cleaning her up properly, I found that for some reason she had been cut in half! I nearly lost her upper body down the sink!

But with some nifty pin making and a little glue, she was easy to repair. As time was a premium I basecoated the entire model with brown paint and whacked over the top a couple of ink washes, first chestnut and then an orange/brown. Highlighting the edges of the armour with a dark silver was enough to give the impression of rusty plate male and I used a sickly purple to pick out the facial features and upper thigh. As green acts as a cohesive colour for the warband I decked her out with a few fancy green leather straps around her waist and tarted up her hairdo with a nice green rinse. 

She took me about ninety minutes to complete, bar drying time for the washes. 

The first warrior required a shield and I threw this together quite quickly. Initially, I quite liked the design (it is based on the three coloured grinning faces from the rear of the palanquin) but in retrospect I think it needs something more to liven it up. Any ideas welcome!

So, not bad for April, especially considering other months. A Nurgling base weighs in at 30 points and the chaos warriors 75 points apiece, giving me a grand total of 180 points for this month!

I need to put myself through the stress of moving house more often it seems, with output like this! 

On to next month!

Tale of Four Oldhammer Gamers: April Part 1 (I hope)

Preparing to move house has left me with the following opportunities for doing any Oldhammering: 'slim and none at all' - and slim has just left town! Despite this set back, I managed to quietly slip away from the list of jobs my wife prepares for me each weekend to dabble with a few of my many unfinished projects. The first of these is this month's TO4OG's post. 

Unlike the others (Chico, Steve and Paul), I am really struggling to get anything completed and I have several other pieces that I hope to share before the close of this month. Both models are pretty close to completion but I want a few more hours tinkering with them before I share them here. 

After fiddling around with a few snotlings last week, I became intrigued by the little fellas and fancied having a crack at some of the Nurglings I have lying around in my collection. I have managed to build up four bases of them from the odds and ends of collecting over the years and decided to do a test paint of one of them this weekend. 

You are looking at the result.  

I used a variant of the recipe I blogged about last week, only using slightly less Bilious Green in the mix. Not wanting all of my daemonic beauties to be green, I also opted to do something similar with brown, as you can see. On the Palanquin, all of the Nurglings were painted identically for ease of painting, while with these bases I was free to mix things up a little. I used purple and red sores to add a little cohesion to the models so they group together nicely. 

Sure, the painting is a little rough and ready around the edges - but I am strapped for time. As long as my models look vibrant and exciting on the games table from about four feet away - I am happy! A hard lesson to learn indeed! 

Unsurprisingly, Nurgling bases are not worth much in actual points. They weigh in at 30 points each, but combined with the next two models I hope to put out by the end of April, they will help raise this month's quota to around 180 points! 

Keep watching!

Orlygg

A Tale of Four Oldhammerers: March's Magician of Nurgle

Oh, what a month it has been. It all started out with this great plan for getting my bigger units finished for this project. After limping along in the race during the Tale of Four Oldhammer Gamers, I wanted to make more of a mad dash to the finish (this year's Oldhammer Weekend in August) and get so BIG units completed. Sadly, life as always intervened. So, a few days ago I finally admitted to myself that I was not going to get the two units of Nurgle I had wanted finished by the end of the month. 

But this left me a problem!

What could I submit if I only had a few days? 

Thankfully chaos is very forgiving in a project like this and the necessary 100 points can easily be found by painting up a single champion model. But what model should I pick? I have a stack of the classic champions that Jes Goodwin designed in the late '80s and I even went as far as fishing their bag out of the Welsh Dresser. In the end though, I decided to paint something really, really special and I chose the model you can see here. 

Being close to the beating heart of Oldhammer, I have been lucky enough to meet a few collectors with some really nice pieces, and I have even managed to pick up a few of them too! Miniatures that were produced, but for many different reasons were never actually released. And this model is one of them. Perhaps you have seen it before on one of the CCM pages?

It has been referenced under 'Empire' and someone has suggested it represents a magician or druid. After painting it, I think that this assessment is not quite right. Judging by it's cadaverous visage (the face resembles a fleshy skull) I suspect that this model was once destined for a 'baddie' range. Having worked on it for a few hours, I feel that the model was never actually completed before casting. Parts of the figure seem unfinished and strangely empty. The 'robe' seems very, very smooth when compared to similar models from the 'era', almost as if additional detail were to be added later, but weren't. 

One thing that did strike me when I was preparing the model for painting were the three 'ball' shape pieces on the back. You can see them here in the image above. I have painted them a rusty silver. They don't appear to be grenades or pouches (you can see a pouch painted red below them) and are really rather inexplicable unless you look at the model from a chaos perspective. 

I feel that they are a Nurgle symbol, such as you see on many shields and models across the Citadel Range. Have a look here to see what I mean in more detail. The red shield clearly displays the classic symbol for the Plague God, doesn't it?

So this begs the question - could this be an unreleased Nurgle Magician instead? I believe so and it is for this reason I chose to paint him up for my (very slowly) growing old school Nurgle army. 

He was great fun to paint. The unfinished areas were suitably challenging and resulted in me having to be more creative with my painting. I had a little serendipity along the way too. As I was sticking the model to it's base, I managed to drip some superglue onto the figure's robe. In attempting to wipe it away I ended up sticking my fingers together and making a right old mess. However, the dried glue gave the robe a little irregular detail and instead of stripping it in the Nitro-Mors overnight (remember, I was on a time limit) I decided to just paint on over the dried glue. 

Can you notice? 

Recently, I unearthed a pot of Bilious Green in my storage area and decided to put the paint to one side to do something with. I haven't actually painted a model with the stuff for over twenty years and the challenge of doing so was a welcome one. You will have seen that I used this green to build up the skin tones with the final highlight being pure Bilious Green - a classic '80s clolour you just don't see any more. Bright red made up the eyes, a purple tongue and brown rotting teeth. The hair was also straightforwards - just grey, light grey and white painted in streaks. 

The robe was harder (not just because it had a crusty layer of superglue on it, either) as it was just so bland. It looked too smooth to be the fetid rags of a Nurgle follower. To solve this, I used a stippling effect with the paint while highlighting and created a rather wormy, irregular finish. A good glaze with a chestnut ink made the material look oily and damp. Nice and offensive like all good Nurgle follower's like to look! 

The staff was a throwback to an old undead army I painted in 2010. I used gold as a basecoat. Then washed over in a dark black ink. Once this was dry, I made a verdigris green wash out of blue and green and seeped this over the staff. Once this dried, the gold looked filthy and aged. I used the original base colour once again to highlight the edges of the metal. 

Bags, feathers and belts were painted quite simply with browns and blacks, as were the shoes. I used my prized Foundry Boneyard triad for the animal skull on the end of the staff. This really is a set of paints you NEED to own as they are absolutely excellent for painting bone. Finally, I used red and blue as spot colours for the pouch and dangling hair tuft below the animal skull - what are these called? 

All in all, I just scraped in with the time limit. Phew! I have been so busy I haven't even had a look at what the other boys in my Oldhammer gang have been up to this month, so I better go remedy that immediately! 

Orlygg

A Tale of Four Oldhammer Gamers: Plague Skeletons

It is Sunday as I write this. Tomorrow brings the first day of half-term and the joyous realisation that I do not have to go to school for another whole week! I have a serious amount of painting to try and get in over the next week as a number of projects draw to a close and others spring up anew from the depths of my lead pile. 

As you will no doubt be aware, Paul, Steve, Ringo and I are all attempting one of those monthly 'Tale of Four Gamers' things, in the hope of joining up at the next BOYL and doing battle with the forces we raise. You will probably recall my post last month about my recently completed plague skeletons. Well, it has taken me ages to get the remaining troops finished and fit for the table, but with all the natural light flooding into my conservatory today, I managed to get them completed.

Looking at the three models above, I can see how very different they have come out. I painted the converted standard bearer first, using a broken figure as a basis, cutting off the staff and replacing the missing hand. Adding the banner pole was quite simple; I used a pin-vice to drill through the raised hand and just pushed some fairly sturdy wire through the hole. 

The heavily armoured chap on the right followed. A sense of deja vu came over me as I worked on this one, as this dolly saw a lot of action across the 1980s and numerous model variants exist. In the past I have struggled to get a decent finish on the chaos versions, so stuck to a very simple drybrush and highlight method on the armour, which covers most of the figure. The haft of the axe needed to contrast with all the nearby metals, so I chose an earthy brown to pick that out. using my smallest brush, I highlighted a grain effect like I usually do. The skull and hair where done as normal, using the excellent Foundry triads for both. 

The final model was the central one. This one is also a variant, though perhaps a more famous one. He is, of course, another version of Mordini from the Nightmare Legion. Considering he is supposed to be in a Nurgle army he has come out a little, well, purple. My reasoning is thus; he was a Slanneshi or Tzeentch Chaos champion who was killed by the Plague Lord's forces and resurrected as an undead champion - in thrall to a hated master. I am sure Nurgle would find such a situation most amusing. 

Here is the completed unit for my Nurgle force. As I said before, I wanted to make each skeleton different but not feel the need to make them look like a Nurgle unit. These are the raised dead that have fought against my army, not followers of the Father of Flies. I had fun with the different shield designs and with the paper banner. Keeping things a bit generic helps me in other ways, as adding some of my other painted skeletons (completed way back when in the early days of this blog) creates a ten figure unit for my undead force. 

Take a look! 

What do you think of my skeletons?

Orlygg

A Tale of Four Oldhammer Gamers: Plague Skeletons

This weekend was a little bit of a busy one, and Fallout 4 currently holds me in its post-apocalyptic embrace but I still managed to get these four plague skeletons finished. These are the the rank and file of the seven skeleton unit I am planning for my Nurgle force. The command models - a skeletal champion, standard bearer and unit commander remain unfinished on my paint station. The standard bearer is a conversion and needs more work, while the other two models only arrived in the post this week and have yet to see undercoat. 

I was keen to make these models a little more generic, rather than go all out on the Nurgle iconography for much the same reason as I did with the plague cart. These models will also be able to become part of my undead force, and as I have three painted metal skeleton warriors elsewhere and future ten man unit is a possibility.

These old Citadel skeletons are full of character. I used to really despise them and strongly favour the plastic models from Skeleton Horde, but actually playing Warhammer has softened my few of them, for the plastic models are so light and spindly they are so easy to break. These chunky boneheads are much more hardwearing than their plastic cousins. I also love the variation of pose, armour and style the skeletons of the '80s bring us. I think all of the major sculptors working at Citadel at the time had a crack at at least one bonehead and they sold is suitable millions over the years to make them very easy to collect now. 

They are totally crap in combat mind, but they look great! 

Unusually for me, I painted the four models as a batch, working on each area separately before moving on to the next. For the bone, I used my trusted Foundry boneyard triad. The rusted metal was fairly simple, with a black undercoat drybrushed dark silver and then orange/brown to create the rusty look, with the dark silver back over the top. I highlighted the chainmail here and there with pure silver, and edged the helmets, plate and shields with the same. As you will have seen, I opted to give each skeleton a 'colour' to add interest. This is where these models differ from my standard undead army models as they stick to a scheme of black, bone, white, metals and brown. 

As is my usual style, I knocked up a couple of shields and had a go at some tiny little freehand skulls. They look naff up close but work reasonably at a distance. 

The 'green' skeleton is my favourite of the bunch. I have always loved the figure ever since I saw one fielded by Thantants at a game in Mansfield. His collection (particularly the undead) has always been a big influence and inspiration to me. This skelly's cheeky beard (still hanging from the jaw) tickled my fancy and I managed to find one cheaply on eBay. Lovely model! 

Right, I am off once again. I have a game in just over a month (In Defence of Far Corfe) and need to produce my units over the next few weeks. Hopefully, I can get a few hours in to finish this unit before March. Until then, enjoy what ever you are painting! 

Orylgg

A Tale of Four Oldhammer Gamers: Plague Cart

Hello all! I have had quite a prolific weekend and managed to get a large number of models near completion. Sadly, the light is diminishing rapidly so I must reluctantly clean off my brushes and pack away until next Saturday. But, blogging is possible in any weather, so he we go...

Last month the leaderboard looked a little like this:

Warlord Paul = 8 points

Steve Casey = 5 points

Chico = 5 points

Orlygg = 4 points

And yes, that is me languishing and the bottom of the table! Not wanting to remain there for any longer than I have to, I got to work building up my rank and file for my Nurgle army. Using the list in the Lost and the Damned gives you a great deal of options, and my eye immediately fell on the units of plague skeletons. I have a large number of undead models sitting in storage as well as an embryonic undead army, so why not kill two birds with one stone and paint up some skeletons!?

Nurgle's daemonic number is seven, so any units I build will need to be grouped by this amount, or a multiple of. I selected seven suitable skeletons and set to work prepping the models. It was then my eye fell on the section for plague carts, and it appears that any player who fields plague skeletons in the Nurgle army can have a cart for FREE! So my Nurgle warband would soon be seeing seven skeletons (lead by a skeletal champion) and a plague cart to boot!

Only I hit a snag. I ran out of decent light today before I could finish the skeletons. But the plague cart that goes with them is, at least, complete. The plague cart usually costs 100 points (and even though I technically don't have to pay them) can act as this month's commitment on its own. I hope to have the skeleton unit complete well before the end of the month, but this post can be my insurance policy just in case!

I must confess to being a big fan of this model. The plague cart is a truly iconic Warhammer model that sadly disappeared from the game some years ago. The beauty of the plague cart is that it can be used in ANY game, thus making it essential to any serious old school Warhammer player. If you are not au fait with the rules let me paraphrase. The plague cart can appear on any battle field and usually travels in a straight line across the table, passing through most obstacles. It causes fear and reanimates fighters slain nearby as it trundles its way wherever! A choice piece for any GM and a regular 'event' in my games of youth. 

Initially, I tried to paint the model entirely with drybrushing but the results were less than spectacular. So I returned to my tried and tested bone recipe - using the Foundry Boneyard triad, which is excellent. I completed the undead ox first but realised that I was in danger of producing a model that just looked like a cart made from bones. How would the eye differentiate between the ox, the wheels and the pile of bones in the back?

In the end, I used a red/chestnut ink wash over the corpses in the back of the cart, before highlighting in my usual way. This gave the bones here a bloodstained look that I really took too, and I used the same technique on my other (as yet unfinished) skeletons. 

The wooden cart was very simple to paint. Just a brown undercoat washed over with black ink. When dry, I drybrushed over with my brown basecoat and highlighted with the darkest shade of boneyard. Very simple. 

In the end, I decided to paint the grim reaper rider like a ghost. If you read the background of the Plague Cart it states that the vehicle is actually ethereal so I wanted to make reference to it on the model. Again, he was fairly easy to paint and I used a dark blue/green mix as a basecoat and added the lightest shade of boneyard gradually to create the highlights. 

To conclude, I am really pleased with how the model came out and it has become one of my favourite ever Citadel miniatures. I discovered a new way to approach the painting for bone that I am keen to try again too. With a point for this post and another point for delivering my 100 point entry for the month in the guise of the cart itself, I now have six points. 

Hopefully, I can earn a few more before the end of January and knock that Paul off the top of the table! 

Orlygg

A Tale of Four Oldhammer Gamers: December

Published just time time to make my fellow gamer (Warlord Paul's) blog post out of date, points wise at least, I have returned to the business of A Tale of Four Oldhammer Gamers after a long absence. Sadly, we have had quite a bit to deal with family and work wise and hobby time has been seriously reduced. My mojo has also been seriously drained by the bleak winter light, but inspired by the glorious output of many a Oldhammerer I have picked up the brush once again and set to work. 

The chaos warrior you see before you is the second model in my new Nurgle army, after the Palanquin of Nurgle I completed last time. If truth be told, I began work on this model in late October, and started work a proper in November. It has taken me just under two months to finish it. No wonder I am languishing at the bottom of our league table!

As with the palanquin model, I used the randomly generated charts in the Lost and the Damned to create the background to this model. There is a handy champion chart on p.209 and I rolled a d1000 to determine what my second character would have in terms of attributes. The dice came in with a lowly 44, so I hastily flicked through the book to find out what fate had in store.

Well, my second character would be a human and have Blood Substitution (maggots) and Agility as their attributes, along with chaos armour. You can field an infinite number of champions as part of your army, each costing 100 points at a base rate, so reaching the target each month shouldn't be too difficult, as if I am in a fix I can just roll off and create a new champion. The trouble is, some of them can turn out to be pretty weak and feeble, a bit like my leader, so there is always a risk. 

The model was pretty straightforwards to paint, if time consuming. As you might have guessed, I have painted A LOT of chaos armour of a variety of hues in my time, so finishing this was no real struggle. I used Foundry's bright green as a base before mixing in a little yellow and bleached bone to achieve the highlights. The shading was added using the same base colour I created with the addition of plenty of black and green ink. 

I quite like using red alongside green, so chose a fairly dark shade to pick out the gloves. I opted for a cheeky blue spot colour too, on the fiendishly faced codpiece! Gold, again Foundry, was used to pick out a few details here and there and silver drubrushing brought out the detail on the chainmail and sword. I used a series of glazes to cut back the brightness of the silver paint and make the figure look a little more dirty. 

The Lost and the Damned has some great ideas for iconography and I wanted to do something a little different on his shield. I chose the plague chalice design and painted it up on a yellow background (chosen to contrast with the green) but used a very similar green for the cup - to help tie the shield back in with the rest of the model. 

If you look at the chaos warrior model, you might notice that it has several maggots or worms wriggling from within. I painted these up using a nice pink created by mixing a dark red with pure white. I repeated the maggot idea on the shield - again to tie the two together. 

Having now completed two character models I am going to opt for a proper unit for January. As I love the old plastic GW skeletons, I am going to do a unit of them. In the Nurgle list, they are known as plague skeletons - and will need an undead hero or chaos champion to lead them. If I plan to paint 14 models - this will take me up to 140 points for the skellies plus whatever the leader of the unit will cost. Of course, If I upgrade the unit further I can probably reach 200 points, which would make up for the month of November that I missed. 

Right, I am off to finish a couple of other painting projects. 

Happy New Year!

Orlygg

A Tale of Four Oldhammer Gamers: The Palanquin is complete!

Way back in September I thought it would be pretty straightforwards painting up this miniature for the Tale of Four Oldhammer Painters project. Little did I realise what I was letting myself in for, as the job took far longer to complete than I previously thought. Sure, much of that was due to the impact that a new year group and curriculum would have on my lifestyle - though it is true to say that I am really enjoying the class I have and the challenges they throw up, more so than ever before. But, I get home quite late now and the light has long gone. You see, I much prefer to work in natural light, preferably morning light so painting this time of year is confined to Saturday and Sunday. I have a nice arrangement with the wife which is fairly simple - I have until 10am each weekend morning to do what I like before she can give me anything more 'useful' to do. So there is my painting time! Only, much of the previous four or five weekends has been taken up with weddings, anniversaries or trips to Chessington World of Adventures. 

Ultimately, time has been short. 

Still, I have managed to slowly chip away at the project in tiny chunks over September and October and I am pleased to say that the palanquin is finished. I have also nearly finished October's entry in the project too, but have about three or so hours left of work to complete on him until he can be shown. I think last time we spoke about the palanquin I had finished work on the chair itself and had the rest of the structure to complete. 

My first job was to paint up the three nurglings that can be found on the chair of the model. As before, I used the new Foundry green paints I picked up at this year's BOYL to pick them out, and used purple as a spot colour. Red and yellow were used to highlight the eyes and provide a few raw looking spots to their bellies. My personal favourite was the little chap poking his head out from under the chair with his tongue hanging out. The palanquin structure was highlighted in a fairly dark gold. I toyed with the idea of using a silver highlight to bring this out, but I felt it made the palanquin look too clean. No good for a Nurgle character I thought. 

I opted to not include the two banners that go with the model for several reasons. The first is a purely practical one - they are quite weak and I was worried that transporting the model with them attached would only result in them becoming broken. Secondly, they are quite small and I fancy trying to convert my own - perhaps adding some iconography based on what the Nurgle warband get up to in games. 

The slime trickling out the back caused a few problems. I wanted the slime to be green, after all that IS the colour of slime but I already had two different versions of that colour on the model. In the end, I created something a little more pastel and used yellow ink washes to bring the colour tone up a little. During this process, I noticed a little maggot thingy had been sculpted on the back of the chair, so I used a little red and white to pink it up and create an interesting contrast. 

With the palanquin complete, it was time to work on the rider. I wanted him to contrast against the opulent colour choices of the palanquin itself, so chose a muted, metallic scheme to start with. This was fairly easy to achieve through a black basecoat drybrushed with a dark silver. This brought out much of the detail and left some suitable shadowing in places - but it was much, much too bright. Once dry, I washed over the silver with a mix of black and chestnut inks and used the wife's hairdryer to speed up the drying process. Then, I washed over the darkened silver with a brown/orange 'rust wash' and again made use of the hairdryer to speed up the stage. 

Next it was a case of painstakingly edge highlighting the armour in the same silver I used to base the model. Here and there I picked out detail in a dark gold too, and then dulled everything down with a black ink glaze. The chainmail was then washed with a blue/green mix to represent verdigris, as were the golden areas on the armour. These were highlighted up with the original gold. 

I chose purple for the gloves to create some variation on the armour. It was a very simple layering job in which a dark purple was painted over the gloves and slowly highlighted up by adding bleached bone to the mix. The face proved to be challenging. After basing in flesh, I washed over with a chestnut ink/ dark red paint wash and highlighted up with the flesh colour, adding increasing amounts of bleached bone until the skin look sickly enough. Purple washes were added to the eye holes and the exposed brain. Once dry, I drybrushed over the brain with bleached bone and glazed with a bloody red. I picked the damaged eye out with a brighter red and a nice yellow dot for a pupil. 

Wanting further contrast with the dark armour and the palanquin itself, I went for a fourth green colour, this time created with the addition of sunburst yellow. I used it to paint up the whip to look like some living coil of chaos - pure yellow was used to highlight the horrible spots that cover the weapon. 

Finally, the sword was painted - and on a whim I went for a blazing red, similar to the one I used fofrone of the faces on the back of the palanquin. I felt that this would add further contrast and tie the seat figure back into the rest of the model. 

Phew! 

It certainly was an epic project and one I really enjoyed. I feel like painting this palanquin has pushed me as a miniature painter and provided some interesting problems to solve. I am also really pleased to have finally painted up one of the this brilliant models. I have wanted one for over twenty-five years so this sees a wish fulfilled!  Sorry about the rather dark snaps -  I use natural light to photograph all of my work and in the depths of October trying to find some is bit of challenge. 

So what do you dear readers think about my Palanquin of Nurgle?

A Tale of Four Oldhammer Gamers: Week Four

Trust me to choose something really challenging to begin with, eh? And 'challenging' is perhaps understating the Palanquin of Nurgle now that I think about it. The photograph above shows you how far I have got with it at the time of writing, and with Chico ringing in and showing off his completed hobgoblin templedog and rider, my first month is doomed to disaster. There is simply no way that this model is going to be finished by the end of September. 

But that wasn't for trying. 

The last time I posted about this palanquin I had just finished off the nurgling base - which took a full weekend! I have spent the little time that I have had in the last week to tinker away at the throne itself. I wanted to go for something opulent, so chose purple as the colour scheme for the padding on the chair and worked out from there. I used the excellent Foundry paint triad for the carved bone supports and orange for the tassels that hang from underneath the seat itself. 

Wanting to continue with the filthy/ornate look, I chose a night sky effect to paint onto the side panels of the throne, and used a nice sickly yellow to represent the stars and moons. 

Those three faces that leer so wonderfully from the back of the palanquin deserved to be properly painted. I felt that standard Nurgle 'grimdark' wasn't where I wanted to go with this model, nor the army that will form around it. Inspired by the very luminous colour choices on chaos miniatures in Bryan's collection, I decided to have a go at something similar. 

I toyed with a few ideas about the final design, and in the end went for red to match with the face above. I have just started to work on the gold edging and need to begin highlighting the base and wash you can see here. I won't go too bright, and hope a more grimy gold can be achieved with a little time invested but that won't be until next weekend as school life beckons once more. 

Still, it's October next month and that means a half-term. So hopefully, I can get two hundred points complete next month, as well as getting this classic Citadel miniature finished. 

We will speak again next weekend. 

Be sure to follow the journeys of my Brothers in Oldhammer; Paul, Steve and Chico - they sound like an alternative universe Beatles - as they complete their first month's work. 

Orlygg