The Pantheon Of Chaos Miniatures Project: An update!

Way back in August I spoke to you about a really exciting project; Pantheon of Chaos. If you don't recall this work in progress range, let me explain a little further. Essentially, a group of sculptors aim to create a series of miniatures (and later rules) inspired by the seminal Realm of Chaos books from the late '80s. 

Well, I had a message from Mustafa Bekir (one of the key players in the project) the other day about some further images from the forthcoming range, so I jumped at the chance of sharing them here. They are, quite frankly, incredible and perfectly capture that mid-to-late '80s Citadel Chaos feel, as the two chaos warrior WIP greens above this writing will attest. 

Mustafa had a great deal to share, so let us have a sneak peak at what they have in store for us!

First up, a range of concept art. I will let the illustrations speak for themselves, but I will say this - don't they look like they were culled from old issues of White Dwarf? The style has been nailed down remarkably well!

There is an excellent Facebook group that the masterminds behind the project have set up. With nearly 700 members at the time of writing, there are certainly a great number of interested people following the development. And like many great community projects, the sculptors are very keen for leadheads to share their ideas and critique the work in progress. 

It is a closed group, so you will have to join. It can be found here: Pantheon on FB.

Next up, the greens! Now remember, most of what you are seeing must be considered to be work in progress but the work that has gone into some of these models is incredible. Just like with this hobgoblin in chaos armour!

Oh, and their beastman range too!!

You are probably thinking - I wonder how well they paint up? Well, I can answer that one too. First up a chaos thug, sculpted in such a way as to represent any one of the major chaotic powers. 

And a superb chaos warrior of Nurgle. Outstanding I am sure you will agree.

I was also lucky enough to be given a copy of a new concept artwork from Tony Ackland - who is continuing to support the creative procress. 

And here is the work in progress sculpt. What fantastic work on that armour, eh?

Big thanks to Mustafa for sharing these with me. I shall be continuing to share content in support of this project and will let you all know when the kickstarter begins in February. I can't wait!!

Orlygg

A return to normal services?

This is one of those obligatory 'I am not dead' posts that crop up on dormant blogs the world over, and those of you who grew up in the United Kingdom (like I did) will well recognise the image I chose to open this post with. It is a 'telly test card' if you didn't know, and used to appear quite regularly when nothing was available for broadcast, usually very late or extremely early, and it was a constant companion of childhood. Well, for those children who did not tarry long in bed. 

So where have I been? The answer is simple - I have been here all along, but I just haven't had the time (through a series of events that have no place here) to really engage at all with the Oldhammer Community. Sure, I was able to drop in through social media - but any real Oldhammering long ground to a halt. 

This is my first attempt at getting it going again. 

I have a number of half-finished posts loitering around to complete, including my write ups from Night of the Living Lead, and I hope to get them out shortly, time permitting. I am also mulling over a mini project to get be back into the swing of things. I am months behind in the Tale of Four Oldhammerers thing that Steve, Chico and Paul are racing ahead with too. Luckily, Christmas beckons and with it some much needed opportunities to sit at my modelling table, when I've tided it up! 

But before any of that, I have a great post to share about that Pantheon of Chaos project that I blogged about a few months back. I just need to finish writing it up. I think readers of this blog will find it most interesting!

Until then! 

Orlygg

Night of the Living Lead III: Bryan Ansell's Treasures!

No day tripper to the Wargames Foundry should miss the opportunity of exploring the glorious miniature display cabinets that the Ansells have organised. They are packed with thousands (this is not an exaggeration) of classic models from GW's Golden Age, as well as a wealth of historical models. 

I had great delight in finding many of the miniatures that Darren Matthew's spoke about during his recent interview. I managed to snap the Genestealer Cult Standard Bearer we saw last week among many others - including the Harlequin models from the boxset. Sadly, the pictures I tried taking of them were not very good, so I shall endeavour to take better ones next time I am there. 

While on the subject of the old Citadel models, it is worth pointing out here just how vibrant the colours still are after a quarter of the century. I have worked hard over the last year or so to align my painting style with that vibrancy and try and pull off the depth of colour that the 'old masters' achieved back in the day. No GrimDark TM for me. 

The multi-talented Marcus Ansell was kind enough to unlock many of the cabinets and I was subsequently able to take a few more detail shots of the more unusual models. This frontal view of the famous War Altar of Nurgle (by Ivan Bartlett) shows a few details I had never noticed before, including the rather horrific (in a good way) driver of the vehicle. Marcus and I discussed the model, and he told me how dusty the piece had become. Sadly, the piece is too fragile to clean and Marcus is certain the model has lost a little of its lustre. 

We moved on to look at the Ork fort I spotted during BOYL 3. This is a glorious model (and I spotted the rest of the scenery that went with it back at Stoke Hall later in the evening, so that survives too) that really rewards careful study, for there are so many little details here to enjoy, if you can spot them!

Hang on a minute! A converted Rhino of Nurgle? Maggots bursting forth? I only managed to find Darren Matthew's infamous war machine of chaos among many of the other classic tanks. Interestingly, the Land Raider shown in the WD image used to illustrate this model on Darren's interview was sitting next to it! I sent the images of this model I took to him and he couldn't believe the piece still existed!

Stuart brought with him the 'missing fishman' to give to Bryan - only for Bryan to produce the same model from his pocket. During the summer, The Mighty Avenger told us that he didn't actually own the third model from the range - but if someone could get him an example he'd cast it up with a new weapon in a similar vein to the Laserburn (and later 40k) fishmen models. I own the previous two fishmen, so I am looking forwards to one day completing the triad of terror. 

Kev Adams produced a special 'Halloween' goblin to celebrate the spooky time of year. The figure was given away for free for all attendees and currently sits on my painting table for completion. Foundry were kind enough to give me a second figure to pass on to Chico. 

Check out this monstrosity! Yes, Kev Adams has been at it again and the ranks of the Warmonger goblinoids (and ogroids) has mushroomed. He has moved on to start working on the beastmen range Foundry will eventually release. Bryan plans to have comprehensive models for all fantasy 'races' as part of this project, though the likelihood of this model being cast in its present state is unlikely. An emasculated version is more likely!

Still, its always a pleasure to see the Goblin Master's sense of humour brought forth in greenstuff!

I also spotted a large assortment of 'ogre-face' shields also sculpted by Kev. These were as varied as they were numerous. I own quite a few of these already, but the new greens I saw surpass even those. 

Where does he get his ideas? 

That question was answered a little later on in the evening as we were invited back to Stoke Hall to attend a gathering for Bryan's birthday. Diane cooked some excellent food (as always) and Marcus wowed us all with a brilliant fireworks display! The concepts for the warmonger project were brought out for our enjoyment and proved a fascinating journey through the business of miniature design. 

Recognise any of these faces?

This riot of ideas from Bryan are passed on to Kev to create the greens we looked at earlier on in the post. 

From left to right - Mags (Staurt Klatcheff's wife), Wayne England, Warlord Paul, Bryan Ansell and Steve Beales discuss the creative process behind this latest batch of fantasy models.

We were shown two enormous folders packed with ideas - written on all manner of left over bits of paper and card. Bryan said that he has to write ideas down as soon as they come to him, so uses whatever he can find lying around. 

Even going as far as annotating photocopied images.

Steve Casey spotted this reassuring note on one of the pages. A return to 'proper' beastmen.

As the guests for the party began to arrive, I felt a tap on my shoulder and found Steve Casey, the famous bridgendsteve on eBay, who had discovered something behind one of the sofas. Do you recognise this painting?

Yes, it is the original painting for the cover of the First Citadel Compendium by John Blanche!

Thanks must be made to the Ansells, our generous hosts, and to these fine people, who were (and are) wonderful people to spend time with, roll dice and invent rude and amusing jokes with. 

I will be back tomorrow with a post about the enigmatic Wayne England and a closer look at his glorious sketchbook. 

Orlygg

Unreleased Citadel C series Cleric 1

I blogged about this model a few days ago but could only share a rather poor photograph. I managed to capture a couple of snaps today in the back garden using my preferred illumination, natural light, and post them up in my usual style. 

This is an extremely rare model. It is part of a wider range of wizards and clerics that never saw the inside of a blister way back in 1987. The CCM website can provide you with comprehensive details of this range of models and it can be found here. As you will have seen, the range has a real mixture of models comprising it. Some are quite obviously unfinished, or were in fact test or training pieces, and it is clear why they never saw release. Others, like the example I have painted above, are wonderful models and you are left wondering why they never made the cut. Talking to a fair few of the personalities involved in the early days of Citadel over the years it is fair to say that things were sometimes a little, and I am quoting Bryan Ansell here, 'disorganised' in the 1980s, so perhaps that explains why little gems like this never made the grade. 

He was a wonderful model to paint but I must admit he has sat on my painting table since August along with the other unreleased wizard I have won in Foundry Painting Competitions. But the need for a small group of miniatures for yesterday's game galvanised me into action. 

The face and hands were fairly straight forwards to paint and I used my usual 'flesh' method. I use a suitable skin tone and a base (in this case it was the new GW Kislev one) and add a spot of dark red and a little brown. Mixing this up gives you a nice dark shade that is perfect for basecoating. I cover every part of the face and hands, leaving no areas of darkness (I used a brown undercoat for the figure) and once dry, wash over with a watery chestnuty ink. Once the ink was is dry, I paint back over with my original base colour and tidy things up. Then adding increasing amounts of the starting colour (the new GW Kislev one) I slowly work up highlights until the face 'pops' as some painters say. 

It is pretty much the same method for everything else you can see here, bar the toad, the laurel and the staff. 

I knew I was going to be using a great deal of white on this figure, so I chose a grey to darken the beard and a blue to deepen the white cloak. I kept the pale tone style for the staff also.  

In case you were wondering, he is holding a small frog or toad on the palm of his hand. It is a wonderful character trait that amused me the moment I saw it and was the reason I chose the model from the selection offered. The amphibian was painted in exactly the same green as the laurel and the bunch of herbs at the wizard's belt, only I used a great deal of sunburst yellow to build up the highlights. I feel that the resulting colour compliments to other green on the fugure very well indeed. 

Overall, he was a real pleasure to work on. 

Night of the Living Lead III: An Overview

Good morning all - well I got back nigh on midnight yesterday after an outstanding day at the Wargames Foundry, in East Stoke. As you will know, I attended the Night of the Living Lead event organised by Warlord Paul and Richard Irvine. 

I travelled up to the event with the Sealed Blister Collector himself, Stuart Klatcheff and his wife Mags and we arrived quite early only to see Tony Yates wandering around with his fellow wargaming enthusiast, Alex. 

Tony had brought his pens and set about producing drawings for Oldhammer fans as is usual custom. Hoping to make the most of Tony's skills with a pen I challenged him to draw for me a barbarian princess. 

And here she is completed. Tony had previously drawn me a chaos warrior in pencil and this piece will soon be gracing the conservatory that I use as my painting room. I am sure that the wife is going to love it! 

Bryan, Diane and Marcus were (as always) fine hosts and kept us fed and watered throughout the day. The Mighty Avenger was full of amusing anecdotes and brought in many of his 'treasures'. Don't worry, we will be looking at them in greater detail in a future post. 

We has the pleasure of meeting Wayne England and having a look at some of his recent work. He was full of fascinating tales about life in the legendary Design Studio of the 1980s.

Bryan's stunning collection of vintage Citadel and historical miniatures were on display, and some of them were even unleashed from the cabinets! Here we can see a close up of the 40k ork scenery piece known as 'The Drop' - essentially a greenskin toilet full of fungus. Bizarrely, its made from a piece of mdf bearing the name of a factory not far from the house I grew up in in Wareham!!!

Players came from far and wide and brought all manner of miniatures with them. I shall write about the game in more detail in its own dedicated post in a few days time once I have sorted out the enormous amount of photographs that were taken. 

The scenario was not a pitched battle. It was a small scale scenario game and so offered a wealth of opportunities for the player and GM (of which we needed two!) and provided us all with the need to create small, characterful forces. 

For example, Matthew Dunn brought along this Halloween inspired pumpkin delivery vehicle along with a small band of intrepid gnomes. The figures we used came from a large number of miniature manufacturers but old school Citadel predominated - can you spot the classic gnome wizard here?

We were lucky enough to have access to the brilliant tables at Foundry and loads of buildings that were brought in by fellow Oldhammerers. Tony Yates offered us the use of many unusual pieces from his own collection that were older than most of the players, including the fantastic 'Wicker Man' inspired piece you can see in the photograph above. 

It was a brilliant day and we have organised another one for February. That game will be a pitched battle so expect to see a great number of different units on the table then!

I have loads more posts to bring you. Hopefully, this overview will whet your appetite for more! 

Orlygg

Night of the Living Lead III: Jeremiah O. Lygg and his hired goons

Good evening all! I have managed to put together a nice little warband for tomorrow's game at the Wargames Foundry and the leader is this; one Jeremiah O. Lygg, the rather dubious druid. It is fair to say that he isn't a good druid - more a dishonest one - but he was great fun to paint. He is part of the old Citadel C series from 1987 but for some quirk of fate was never actually released. You can find an unpainted example of the figure here at Solegends if you are interested. 

I won him in a painting competition last summer at BOYL3 and he has been sitting around for ages in need of painting up - so I took the impending game as my cue to get him finished. Sorry about the crap photo - but by the time I had based him the light was gone and I had to resolve to using a desk lamp - which washes out most of the colour. I will take some better photos of him and his 'hired goons' tomorrow. 

He will be leading these gents; Paulus, Chico, Stefan and Ratter on a perilous adventure down an abandoned gnomish mine. 

Here's the GM's background: 

Deep in the mines at the dead of night, a grinding sound. But the sound of the rock being hewn is not the work of the miners. None of the gnomes of the village of Thingwall have been down the mine in days. Nobody would dare, not since several of the miners went missing. Some were found days later with their throats slit and their blood spilled on the floor in the shape of a pentagram. Others have simply disappeared.

YOU are an adventurer, called upon by the Duchess of Thingwall to help the little people in their hour of need. YOU and your band of companions have been asked to investigate. Who or what has caused the disappearance of the miners? Who or what is producing the strange grinding sound in the night?

Beware. Not all is as it seems in the village. Who can be trusted? More importantly, what's in it for you? And how can you be sure that the other would-be 'investigators' aren't involved in the murders and disappearances themselves?

An adventure for small bands of warriors (3-5 models) using the Warhammer 3rd edition rules.

And here they are, in a much better picture I took in the summer. 

As always with these scenarios, and you can expect a full report on all the goings on Sunday, we all had to draw up some background for our forces for Richard, the GM, to play around with. Here's mine: 

"Oi, that's my bacon!" Chico blustered, grabbing Paulus' wrist and squeezing his flesh until the greasy meat was released back onto the filthy table. Paulus gave his fellow footpad a hearty shove and leaned back against the slime-ridden wall that held up the abandoned farmhouse, the smirk never shifting from his lips.

"Calm down you two," Stefan mumbled, "I have nearly got the lead up to temperature and need you rapscallions in your places. These coins won't forge themselves."

Chico picked up the stamp Stefan had left on the workbench. Next to it were the cooling piles of the previous hours work - piles of ersatz coins any fence would be proud to shift. He peered at the tiny writing that curled across the face of the coinage.

"What king is that supposed to be?" He asked for the hundredth time.

Stefan sighed, and told him.

"McDeath."

Three ne'er-do-wells, Chico, Stefan and Paulus, are busy doing what they do best - forging coins and running up debts. They are just about to complete work on a huge order of 'McDeath' groats when there is a sharp knock at their door. Sure that their whereabouts were secret, the three footpads are startled and reach for their blades in panic. Before any of them can react, the battered door creaks open to reveal the thin, wiry frame of Jeremiah O. Lygg - the dubious druid of Dunststadz.

"Good evening, there is no need to be alarmed!" The druid said, his deep voice filling the room twice over. "Do settle down Gerald!"

Chico looked at Paulus. Paulus looked at Chico.

"Who's Gerald?" They asked in unison.

"I need your help once again," Jeremiah went on, ignoring (or perhaps, not hearing) the question. Adventurers are needed to clear a mine to the South and there are, well, reasons why I need to be there. Reasons that are not open for discussion... Do sit still Gerald!!"

Baffled, Chico peered around the room to check that there were indeed only four of them. Who the blazes was this Gerald?

"I can pay," the druid went on, "and in Imperial silver too!" The old man's eyes looked over the fraudulent coins on table with indifference. "Do you still have that old hound, what was he called? Fatter?"

"Ratter." Paulus corrected.

"That's right!" The druid exclaimed, adjusting the pouch at his side. "I have need of his nose - stop that Gerald! We shall meet beneath the sign of the crow at dawn. Don't be late."

With the words spoken, the druid turned to leave. "Come on Gerald, let's go home," he said to the large, green toad that curled up on his palm, it's yellow eyes glinting evilly in the gloom.

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?