The Grumpy Stunty

Necromunda Gang

2012-01-31T23:17:00.005Z

Started work on my Necromunda gang, three guys so far. A heavy stubber and two lasguns. They still need a little bit of work, especially the last one as you can see the divide between the two halves. The heavy stubber conversion I am unsure of, it works but could be better.

Big Mek Conversion

2012-01-22T23:58:00.006Z

So, this is the newest big mek to my army. I liked the idea of giving him a blow torch, so I shortened a burner and gave him a special spanner. The rest is just bitz and pieces from different ork kits, cut up and glued on. I quite like it, I think it looks suitably orky and a huge mismatch.

Da Green Tide Takes to Da Skyz!

2012-01-21T16:24:00.000Z

So a semi busy week, using what time I got at my desk I managed to put together another painted ork:

I am pretty happy, the blue hasn't turned out very well in these pictures (my camera hates turquoise colours O_o ). Ignoring the skin I am pretty happy with the new look colour, he is a tad rough with the highlighting, I just wanted to get him painted. I do like the colour of his trousers, and the red on the shoulder pad worked better this time.

And, I decided to get some conversions on deffkoptas done. And... here we go, two. Oh, and they don't have heads or arms as I'll attach them after painting.

The first isn't that heavily converted.I move the rotor blades back slightly as I wasn't a fan of the angle. He also got a bunch of extra damage all over, and then a big ass buzzsaw. I also now see no idea how he can land, but that's nothing orks care about.

Now, this one. I went to town on. I saw a conversion and wanted to make it work, so I made a plane. Took loads of work and I was finding it hard to find bits for the engine, so it didn't look so boring and plain. I think it worked out well. I have to thank Mr Jones for the idea with the buzzsaw - or in this case a wrecking ball. I think it works really quite well and am happy with them.

Blowing the dust off...

2012-01-11T21:08:00.007Z

Oh wow, it has been a while. A long while since I touched this thing. I could list multiple excuses and reasons but honestly, it's because I was lazy and didn't feel like painting. I have started to game more (and having more boardgame fun too! :D )

On that note, I was about to open up this thread again. I have painted two models! YES, TWO! First off we have the Empire Explorer that was painted for the Secret Santa. It was a random model and one I wanted to be a bit different. It was fun to paint, I chose quite bright colours as this guy is a nice proud fellow.

The second model I have been doing is an Ork. I have been playing with them more often and the army I have doesn't work amazingly well and I have no flexibility. I am slowly going to expand the army. (Here is a link to the army pictures if you need reminding: http://s198.photobucket.com/albums/aa172/Kuffeh/Orks/ ). The colour is almost the same, but I have added blue into the turquoise. I might have to test more and make it bluer - the turquoise is quite strong. The other thing I have done is play about with the skin. I usually have gone for a darker green, this time I wanted to go brighter, to make the skin stand out. The metallics I am not a fan of, I need practice with them. I have never been very good painting them, so more practice required. I tried to add a splash of colour to his gun and helmet, but went a bit OTT on the metal showing through. Next time I'll pull that back it a bit, as I am planning on each squad getting a colour/pattern unique to them, thus making them easier to identify during games.

I haven't thought about the base much, I was considering an ash waste look or the quite typical urban one. Not sure yet. Ideas?

I am hoping to do another one later, to sort some stuff out - metallics for example. Also, any ork bitz you kind folks have free will have a nice home. ;)

BA Librarian Update

2011-10-16T14:34:00.000+01:00

OK, I haven't done much painting recently - not had the bug to do so, might see this week. I did however finally get around to taking some pictures of the completed BA librarian.

Return to painting...

2011-09-29T20:41:00.000+01:00

OK, so... I have not had internet for some while. And only recently did I get my table set up, only to paint two random minis. I also painted up another Ork, testing out a scheme remake. Anyway, onto these two minis.

The first is a random Mordheim human warrior. I felt like doing a Fantasy model and this guy just sort of fell into place. Although it is a lot of brown, I found that he worked quite well with them being different colours. I liked the base, the use of the seeds/flowers adds a little something to the base.

The second one is because I think I'm going to start a CSM army at some point and this is the scheme I designed. I like it a lot, just not sure of the "chapter" badge will be like.

Dwarf army the collection

2011-08-18T10:46:00.000+01:00

So, with "finishing" the army I thought it was time to collect up the posts into a single one, just to see what I have done. Overall it has taken me the better part of a year to nearly complete my dwarf army, and I am pretty happy with the way they have turned out. So, here is my dwarf army:

http://thegrumpystunty.blogspot.com/2009/09/back-to-my-roots.html
http://thegrumpystunty.blogspot.com/2009/09/test-dwarf-b.html
http://thegrumpystunty.blogspot.com/2009/12/so-uni-is-almost-about-to-have-its.html
http://thegrumpystunty.blogspot.com/2009/12/christmas-period.html
http://thegrumpystunty.blogspot.com/2010/01/dwarf-thane.html
http://thegrumpystunty.blogspot.com/2010/01/thane-complete.html
http://thegrumpystunty.blogspot.com/2010/01/dwarf-runesmith.html
http://thegrumpystunty.blogspot.com/2010/02/runesmith-nearly-complete.html
http://thegrumpystunty.blogspot.com/2010/02/dwarf-warriors-wip.html
http://thegrumpystunty.blogspot.com/2010/02/dwarf-warriors-wip_27.html
http://thegrumpystunty.blogspot.com/2010/03/dwarf-warriors-wip-redux.html
http://thegrumpystunty.blogspot.com/2010/03/dwarf-warriors-almost-there.html
http://thegrumpystunty.blogspot.com/2010/03/dwarf-warriors-complete.html
http://thegrumpystunty.blogspot.com/2010/10/dwarfs-tale-from-king-to-clansman-part.html
http://thegrumpystunty.blogspot.com/2010/10/dwarfs-tale-from-king-to-clansman-part_23.html
http://thegrumpystunty.blogspot.com/2010/11/dwarf-cannon.html
http://thegrumpystunty.blogspot.com/2010/11/dwarfs-tale-from-king-to-clansman-part.html
http://thegrumpystunty.blogspot.com/2011/01/dwarfs-tale-from-king-to-clansman-part.html
http://thegrumpystunty.blogspot.com/2011/01/dwarfs-tale-from-king-to-clansman.html
http://thegrumpystunty.blogspot.com/2011/01/dwarfs-tale-from-king-to-clansman_30.html
http://thegrumpystunty.blogspot.com/2011/02/dwarfs-tale-from-king-to-clansman-unit.html
http://thegrumpystunty.blogspot.com/2011/02/dwarfs-tale-from-king-to-clansman.html
http://thegrumpystunty.blogspot.com/2011/02/dwarfs-tale-from-king-to-clansman_28.html
http://thegrumpystunty.blogspot.com/2011/03/dwarfs-tale-from-king-to-clansman-great.html
http://thegrumpystunty.blogspot.com/2011/05/fantasy-dwarfs-tale-war-machines.html
http://thegrumpystunty.blogspot.com/2011/05/fantasy-dwarfs-tale-war-machines-part.html
http://thegrumpystunty.blogspot.com/2011/05/fantasy-dwarfs-tale-stone-thrower-ii.html
http://thegrumpystunty.blogspot.com/2011/05/fantasy-dwarfs-tale-stone-thrower-iii.html
http://thegrumpystunty.blogspot.com/2011/05/fantasy-dwarfs-tale-army-standard.html
http://thegrumpystunty.blogspot.com/2011/06/dwarfs-tale-longbeard-progress.html
http://thegrumpystunty.blogspot.com/2011/07/fantasy-dwarfs-tale-longbeards.html

Well... that is a hell of a lot of posts. I hope you enjoyed my journey and thanks for commenting on it throughout, the support helped keep me going. And I look forward to expanding on them in the future!

Moving time...

2011-08-15T10:25:00.001+01:00

As I have previously mentioned in a few weeks I shall be vacating the county of Kent (it's a mutual agreement) and moving back to the cold north. That being Leeds, Yorkshire. This weekend all but two weeks worth of clothing has been removed and gone to the girl friends house, the flat looks decisively bare. Unfortunately this of course implies that all my miniatures have also been whisked off. :sadpanda:

Basically I will not be doing any painting for some time. Even when I get to Leeds we are house sitting for my girl friend's parents, and although her father is a gamer (FOW), I don't think I'll be able to get much painting done. This is sad to me. It might also be that I am not on the internet that much - their router is HORRENDOUS! And you cannot get a signal anywhere that is not sat right next to it. But we shall see. So, instead I am most likely to be playing on games and trying to get games in at the local gaming group: Leeds Night Owls. With any luck I will be able to get in some games of Fantasy and 40k!

Since I have not too recently (end of last month) finished off my Dwarf army, I am going to be moving on to some different stuff. Basically I will not be touching an army for a short while, I want to paint some small things - like a Blood Bowl team or single miniatures - but I will be moving back into painting armies. I have a vaguely planned Space Wolf and Orc and Goblin army to get around to doing soon. And of course expanding my Dwarfs. The Orks will also get a look in, but I think they'll get a repaint rather than anything else. They don't look that good (being done very quickly) and would rather spend a bit more time on them to make them look good. This will possibly mean an alteration in paint scheme - same colours but different way of doing them. However, I am in no great rush for my armies. I have a working force for both 40k and Fantasy, so I plan to slowly build up these armies in small batches - something like 300-500pts at a time. A nice gentle pace.

So what am I doing in the mean time? Well, for the next two weeks I will be tidying it up to be ready to move and playing an awful lot of WOW (no TV or Xbox... :( ) and then perhaps play on the X-box when I get to Leeds. I have a bunch of games to work through before I can really buy any more without feeling very guilty.

So... don't expect lots of stuff from me over the next few weeks - month. But hopefully something will happen. Who knows, perhaps I'll even get the Trading Post going and active once again....

[40k] Space Marine Librarian - 2

2011-08-06T23:01:00.002+01:00

So, for the last week I have been working on this librarian I previously mentioned.....
I decided I wanted to make him a Blood Angels librarian, hence the red shoulder pad. I tried to keep the colours on him down to a minimum but strong enough that they draw the eye to themselves. In general I have finished him, minus the base of course (that is to come this week). All I have left to do is some freehand on the shoulder pads, book, seals and perhaps something on the edge of his robes. My blending is not up to scratch on parts of the model, the sword is especially a little patchy, I am how ever happy with the robes.

I chose purple for the force sword to try and tie the colours together, the blue, purple and red work very well together without them being too much.

So, a little while later and I have managed to get some freehand done. The Blood Angels badge and a book. I am pretty damn happy with them, they are not perfect but are among my best freehand to date. I am not sure if the book needs more, I have seen some pictures of old librarian banners/badges that have a sort of halo above the book and lightning bolts. I have decided to avoid doing anything like another chapter badge over the book.

I am also unsure if the robe needs a little trim - like a border - or if so perhaps some blood drops in the corners. But I don't know if that would be a good idea or not.

[40k] Space Marine Librarian

2011-08-03T02:55:00.000+01:00

So, I have finally gotten around to starting my project for the Charity Sale I try to hold on LO. The theme is a 40k HQ model, and wanting to step away from doing anything with beards for a short while I decided to go with a straight marine.

I also wanted to do a bit of a conversion, not loads but enough that he looks different. So, after settling on a librarian I decided to try out the psychic hood I have seen Ron at From the Warp do a couple of times. I think it turned out quite well. For the pose I wanted it to seem like he was walking forwarding while 'casting', which is why the hand is out stretched and his blade lowered. I am not sure on his chapter yet, but I was thinking perhaps of doing him as a Blood Angel. I also need to think how to do his base.

Return from the Meet

2011-08-01T11:36:00.000+01:00

This weekend was spent at the awesomeness that is WHW in Nottingham. The meet's turn out was not as good as it has been in previous years, being only fifteen members show up over the entire weekend but that did not stop us having a good time. We had pretty much all the 40K stuff turn up with only three Fantasy armies making an appearance (including my dwarfs). I would have liked/expected more Fantasy but never mind.

I managed to get two games in, one against an odd Beastmen list and one against my hated foe the Orcs and Goblins.

Beastmen
His list consisted of a sort of spam list with lots of small units of centigor, some chariots and dogs. Needless to say I had deployed my entire army before his actual units had even touched the tabletop. This led to his doing a refused flank and having his centigor roll up and sweep across. It did not end well for the bearded warriors. Some highlights were...

- Him using all his dice each turn to summon a gorgon on at my table edge. It got off once and was promptly organ gunned off the table (10 hits), but his shaman survived the five toughness tests with a single wound left.

- The organ gun seeing off harpies, spawns, a gorgon and some dogs. Not bad for 120pts.

- The doombull munching it's way through my units an me failing to even drop a few wounds on the beast.

- A cannon shot overshooting the doombull sat in the open on its own and only smushing a single centigor.

- The hammerers killing off two chariots and the BSB before failing their stubborn roll and being run down.

I learnt some stuff in this game. Being as it was my first ever 8th edition game, I feel I did not do terribly. I was guessing too close to models for the cannon shots and overshooting them, or in two separate cases hitting them but failing to do anything but a single wound to them! Sucks.

Orcs and Goblins
This list was a lot of units. Large blocks of goblins, some orcs and he was trying out some black orcs. Overall I felt that through most the game I was not standing a chance. Some fanatics battered up some hammerers my longbeards were munched on by black orcs and trolls in the flank. My war machines exploded both turn three. Overall it looked dire, having only a weakened hammerer block, some warriors and a few remaining dwarfs from my missile units. Then his black orcs got a front charge on my warrior block. Heroes of the game.

- His black orc warboss had the Battleaxe of the last Waaagh, so was in every fight hitting me with between seven and eleven attacks that would be killing me on twos. He'd kill make three dwarfs, if he was lucky.

- My reply against some wounds from the black orcs was to kill eleven - the unit barring the BSB and lord - who then failed their break test and was run down by warriors. This saved me the game and actually put me up to 382 points ahead.

- Three fanatics hot my lines, went through two units and killed a total of three dwarfs.

- The doom diver hot every time, killed a single dwarf every time.

- Goblin hordes got smashed in combat, then broke but outrun the dwarfs. A theme of the game, my inability to roll higher than four for my pursuits.

The rest of my weekend was taken up by watching the 40K games and wishing I had brought my Orks. So I took a load of pictures instead (album at the end). Our yearly raffle was a great success, raising £70 for the prizes, most of which wnt to the guy who brought £28 worth of tickets! Overall, despite to low turn out it was a great weekend, and I look forward to next year.

The LO Meet 2011

Moving on....

2011-07-28T20:39:00.000+01:00

OK, it's not as serious as it sounds. I haven't updated in quite a while, this is because I haven't done any painting for a bit. After the Longbeards I realised I had a Dwarf king and an Organ Gun to paint, but had a very busy couple of weeks - spent most of last week in Leeds for my girl friend's graduation (yay her!), and last weekend I had a bunch of friends down. Thus no time to paint. Luckily I already had what I needed to paint from a previous army version.

With this my Dwarf army is complete to about 2000pts. I am overall quite happy with how they look, the scheme is quite easy to do and I have been discovering new methods of painting Dwarfs. I have plans to expand them further soon to give me more options to play about with. However in the meantime I will be getting my first Dwarf, and indeed first 8th edition games in this weekend. Quite sad that I haven't been able to play it before. :(

This weekend sees myself and fellow gamers from Librarium Online are going to Warhammer World for our yearly Meet. A weekend of gaming. This time around I am only taking Dwarfs, this being because they are the only complete and serviceable army I possess (the Orks got battered on my move down to Kent and I never fixed them. =/ ) and for ease of travel. Looking forward to this, and have been for some time. :)

I have had a good time recently with my Orks, been on a run of 9-0-2 (W-D-L). I have been recording my gaming progress in an excel chart, it is quite nice to be able to see my progress. And I am enjoying playing about with excel a little.

The final thing I have to say is this... I am moving again soon, myself and the girl friend are moving up to Leeds (she's doing a Masters there) and her parent's are kindly bringing some stuff up to Leeds from Kent for us. Then we get to house sit their place for a month while we look for our own flat. EXCITING. This does mean that for a short period I might be out of contact with the internet, either due to their house having bad signal or when we move and have to set everything up. I am hoping to get one mini done over the next few weeks before my stuff all gets packed up, not sure what yet but I will be tracking it.

Just thought you'd like to know...

[FANTASY] A Dwarfs Tale: Longbeards Completed

2011-07-14T19:04:00.000+01:00

Finally after what seems ages I have managed to finished off the Longbeard unit for my revamped army.

Overall I am happy with the unit, they were a little rushed here and there (trying to get them finished for the end of the month) but overall the unit looks good. I originally wanted to do the beards all going from browns and greys to white, but I like the difference the blonde and grey have on the unit.

The first thing I'd like to point out is the standard bearer conversion. For those who know, he is one of two semi-rare dwarf models. Two versions of him exist, with a few slight changes [one has a different banner and a comb over]. I'm not a fan of the original unit standard, so I put this BSB model in, cut down his banner pole, added a cloth banner and the top from the metal longbeard standard.

I also tried a little bit of freehand on the unit. You will see in the next picture the freehanded banner, I want the icon on each unit type to sort of match so the longbeards have an 'ancestor face' on their banner. It is based off of an image in the header of the dwarf army book, I feel it looks pretty good but could be better but hopefully that will just come though time and practice.

The other freehand is on the shields. Instead of doing my usual thing and having the army image (a mountain pierced by a spear), I went with two images which mean something along the lines of 'shrine' and 'ancient one' or 'longbeard'. Again I think they turned out pretty well, but with some practice they'd look even better.

It will however seem that I am going to fail in my plan to complete my dwarf list for the LO Meet. The Hammerers aside, I will not have time for an organ gun (tomorrow until Wednesday I'll be in Leeds for my girl friend's uni graduation from Sheffield, then the weekend some friends are staying over and the following weekend is the meet!), which means I am going to concentrate on the Dwarf King instead. I already have an organ gun I can use as a stand in.

[Musing] Painting!

2011-07-05T11:02:00.000+01:00

It's been a while since I posted on here, nearly a month in fact. I have been quite busy, well... sort of. Got some painting done, and not done. ...

First of all the painting, the Longbeards are still being worked on. I am on the final six out of twenty, although I did realise last night that I didn't have enough bases for them so one will be a four dwarfs on a monster base. Overall they're coming along nicely and I hope to have them all but based by Friday. Then they won't be finished until next Monday - Dad's 60th birthday this weekend. With the completion of the Longbeards that leaves me with just the Organ Gun and King to paint, to be completed by the 28th July. Sounds easy but when you factor in missing a week soon for my girl friend's graduation and visiting friends, not so much. As I have mentioned in a earlier post, the Hammerers are on hold until I can figure out a method for making them that I'll like. I dislike the metal/resin ones and most of the plastic conversions I have seen just don't sit right with me. They look like warriors 2.0.

On top of this I have spread my listening of podcast to 40K centric ones and have enjoyed it. I picked up a bunch of the recent episodes of the big names. This has led me to consider strongly what to do after the Dwarfs, and leads me onto my next point.

My name is Kuffy, I have gameritis.

All I really want to do is collect armies. I have one complete, albeit broken, 1500pt Ork army and I keep coming up with new list ideas for about a dozen more armies. I know for 40k I plan to have a Ork and Space Wolf army and for Fantasy a Dwarf and Orc & Goblin force. And yet, I keep adding extra armies onto my choices. I use to think that I'm the kind of gamer who would pick a list and make it HUGE, and I still want to do this, however it seems that I also want to have multiple massive armies. I have been considering three - four forces per system, and that isn't including Blood Bowl, Mordheim or Necromunda (or WarmaHordes if people play it near me). It's a lot. I just keep having to remind myself of cost, time and bring myself down from the top of these plans before they topple over.

That said, when I finish with the Dwarfs I plan to either paint something basic (looking at the human team from Blood Bowl) or do nothing for a short while to recover. After this I plan to slowly build my major faction choices in about 500 - 750pt blocks. I was planning on making a 2000pt list for them all, with each having a 500pt 'side board' of random stuff that I like the look/sound of. This would hopefully mean that as they grow they become more playable; and with already having a playable Ork army, and nearly playable Dwarf army I should be able to play games but with an expanding choice of options for them.

The Orks will be next - mainly because they're damaged as it is and 40k tends to be a bit more prolific that Fantasy and it would possibly be easier to get a game in. With this in mind I have been bookmarking a whole bunch of ork threads from 'Da Waaagh' for inspiration. And inspired I have been. I am looking forward to it.

So, over the next month be sure to check back and you'll see appearing soon my Longbeards, Organ Gun and Dwarf King. After that, well I'll see where the muse takes me...

[FANTASY] A Dwarfs Tale: Longbeard Progress

2011-06-14T16:19:00.001+01:00

First batch of the Longbeard unit up...

OK, so been a while. I have been doing a whole bunch of stuff; saw Derren Brown live and finally finished up Red Dead Redemption. In that time I have started on the Longbeard unit. Seven (below) are complete except for the shields, which I am unsure what to do for the icon on them. And I think on the next batch I need to make the beards whiter, they just look blonde at the moment - it is a little bit lighter in person. But overall I am quite happy with how they look, I have another 13 of them to go.

I am as of yet sure how to go about my hammerers. I do not think they will be done for the LO Meet, as the main methods are either; metal (or resin now) versions - expensive or plastics, which to me just do not look like hammerers without some decent GS work. So, they might not make it but the rest of the army will be completed. They will come later.

[Fantasy] A Dwarfs Tale - Army Standard Bearer

2011-05-27T11:51:00.000+01:00

So, back on the painting bandwagon and doing some more Dwarf stuff, I have managed to completely finish the army standard bearer (BSB)....

Overall I am pretty pleased with how he's turned out, the cloak especially. I wanted it to look like a wolf pelt, and I think it was quite successful. I did the inner runes white because there was just too much gold/bronze on the model already and any more would just not suit. I am pretty pleased with how that turned out.

My plan to get the army done for the LO Meet looks as though I might miss out. It's a shame, but I think the army shall be mostly complete by then. I have very little left now:

Dwarf Lord
Longbeards
Hammerers
Organ Gun

So, this is achievable and hopefully they'll all be done before I move back up north in August. The Hammerers I am actually planning on converting from the plastic kit. I have never been a fan of models that are done in this manner, but it is better than spending nearly £60 on models - especially now as it is unclear when the new resin versions will be released. So, I am looking into doing them from a guide I saw on Bugmans, with a slight alteration or two. To help with this I brought some clay shapers, looking forward to testing them out.

Next up, the old metal Longbeards. Who have been sat soaking in a bath of Simple Green for FAAAAAAAARRRR too long.

[Fantasy] A Dwarfs Tale - Stone Thrower III

2011-05-14T02:27:00.002+01:00

The Stone Thrower, come mortar has been completed. I have been working away all week and last night got the beast finished.

As usual, there are some things I am not a big fan of. I still cannot get the silver metallics to look right, they're OK but there is either too much contrast or too little between layers. And Stymie Jackson from Bugman's Brewery was right, the base doesn't work amazingly well. So next time I will be going back to using miliput, but will try to make the bases thinner, as not to use loads of putty.

However, overall I really like the mini. It works well and fits with the look and feel of the army. The conversion also turned out well. Next up should be the BSB. I am hoping to have the army done by the end of July, and remaining to paint is:

BSB
20 longbeards (metal)
organ gun
Lord
20 Hammerers

Still in two minds about the hammerers. It would cost about £50 to order the metal ones from GW, and I really dislike how they look. But if I don't order them soon, then judging by how GW are doing things at the moment, they'll be removed from stock. Or I could try to convert them from the plastic kits, many attempts have been seen but don't really do it for me. And my meagre green stuffing skills don't help this prospect. Choices!

Here are a bunch of pictures of the mortar, let me know what you think:

[Fantasy] A Dwarfs Tale - Stone Thrower II

2011-05-10T03:20:00.000+01:00

So, two days work and the crew of the stone thrower are complete. I am pretty damn happy with them, they've worked out quite well.

[FANTASY] A Dwarfs Tale - War Machines Part II

2011-05-06T21:34:00.001+01:00

I have done a mock up of the complete mortar. I have found that it is quite busy looking - with four crew (including Engineer). One thing that might be noticeable is the base is different. There is one reason for this, I didn't have enough miliput to make the base and wall. This got me considering something and I realised that using miliput is just not cost effective. It is expensive and time consuming, the problem is I already have half my army based with miliput stamped bases. I am going to try a new method on the mortar, that is I have cut in squares onto the actual base to represent flagstones. If this looks good when it is painted then I am likely to keep with this method for the rest of the army. It might look a little disjointed, with some raised others not but it is cheaper and quicker. But as I say, that I have not decided upon just yet.

[FANTASY] A Dwarfs Tale - War Machines

2011-05-06T17:43:00.001+01:00

Back on to the dwarfs now. Been converting up two war machines, my mortar (aka a Grudge Thrower) and an organ gun.

I have green stuffed over the little bits of plasticard you can see, need to neaten it up a bit. Overall I am quite happy with how it looks - any guesses what it's made from?

I am not fully keen on the wheels (Organ Gun). I don't think they work really well, but I don't have anything else to serve - the wheels I used on the mortar.

I need to gather minis for the crew now and stuff, then the base. I am hoping to be painting from Monday/Tuesday. With any luck.

[MORDHEIM] Possessed and Warband Completion

2011-04-23T02:44:00.001+01:00

On this Easter Weekend I have finished my possessed warband before I go back up north for family visits and such.

These have been a while in the making, although as it turns out I missed a single base for for one of the minis, I missed him. =/

For the possessed I went for a flesh tone colour, I think he fits in really well with the 'band's colour scheme. The bases I wanted to do something different, so I went for a brown base with grey stones. I would have liked to have a more dead looking static grass... but I don't have any.

And the (near) complete warband.

[MORDHEIM] Possessed Colours.... help.

2011-04-20T22:07:00.000+01:00

Right I need an opinion on something. I am unsure what colours to paint the possessed model in. My first thought was a purple, as that is the themed colour of the warband but as the model doesn't have any cloth he'll be one big lot of purple and I don't know how well that'll turn out. Then I have considered doing him flesh toned, with a purple wash/shading. I want him to look good without the colour choice being too much. Below is my conversion, I went for a more daemonic look about him rather than a daemon mutated human. I hope.

[MORDHEIM] Magister

2011-04-16T14:17:00.000+01:00

Been working on this guy for a couple of days, I am overall pretty happy with him. The dagger is different to the axe due to it falling off and the little knife working better, he does however have a mace to protect himself if need be. Unfortunately the highlights on the scroll and skulls have been washed out a little bit.

[Mordheim] Possessed Warband

2011-04-07T22:37:00.000+01:00

An update on the Possessed Warband from a long time ago. Trying to finish off some projects, here we have two mutants and a beastman.

OK. So, since the weekend I have painted up three members of my Mordheim warband. Two mutants and a beastman. It was hard to match the colours with the older models as I didn't write down the recipe. I think I managed it though and overall I am quite happy with them. I did go a bit nuts with the blood effects, but it works well. I also really like the metallics, dark and rusty looking.

So, first up we have the Beastman:

And the two Mutants:

"Dice is Our Vice"

2011-04-04T22:18:00.000+01:00

As you might have guessed from the title, I have been listening to a certain podcast recently. Can you guess which...?

Fine, it is the D6 Generation. I have of course always heard of it, but I never put the time in to listen until last week. I needed something new with most of the warhammer podcasts having done their rounds, so I decided to drop by this podcast. It is A W E S O M E ! ! ! I mean it. I have had a great time listening to a group of guys who are not sole GW fanboys and have a more ecliptic view of the gaming world.

I have found they have awoken some desire for a gaming group better than what I have here (they only do 40k and have a max of two - three tables available each week for gaming on). And that I want a wider taste to the world of gaming. I am very much, and I have no shame in this, a GW fanboy. I have my issues with them, but to my mind no one does the miniature gaming hobby better than they do. I stick very closely to their products, collecting multiple armies for their various systems (Mordheim, Warhammer Fantasy, 40k and Blood Bowl). I do like the other miniature gaming ranges (Privateer Press and Wyrd for example) but I cannot bring myself to start any of these new systems until I find a gaming group that is more open to them and larger than getting six or seven gamers a week. I do think I want to get involved with some of these systems, but the time is not yet right.

Another thing I have found that I really want to get into playing more board games. I recently picked up Talisman, after a visiting friend brought his copy down, and it is awesome fun. I do hope you fantasy gamers out there have played it. It is very simple and fun with a great fantasy setting, even my girl friend has had a great time playing it. I however have not had the best of luck, out of three games I have lost about six characters. Which is a lot. I found that listening to the D6G I want to try more of these games they describe and discuss. For example there is Decent that they seem to love, it is expensive but the dungeon crawler genre sounds very appealing to me. Very. I just need people to play these games with!

They have also stirred in me another desire that I have never been able to touch. Roleplaying. I have always been interested in doing an RPG but never found the guts to look for a group or been in an area where the right kind of people who might be interested could be found. I actually again have been looking towards the GW universe for this. The idea of Dark Heresy is pretty nice, I am considering picking up the rulebook soon just to check it out. I already own the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying 2nd Edition, so that could be fun to play about with. One thing that has stopped me from trying RPGs is lack of experience with them, to be confident to partake in them I would like to try it with an experienced group or GM. I would however love to be one day a GM myself. I like controlling games.

I am a fan of RPGs, they are my favourite video game (the Final Fantasy series has been my favourite for a very long time). And I have recently stepped into the realm of MMORPG - ie, WOW. I am really enjoying it, although I have not decided upon a race or class properly yet. I have just started up an Orc Shaman and am quite enjoying him, before that it was a human Warlock. I do not do the instances, dungeons or PvP although I would like to try at some point. At other times I have more games to play, those being Fable III (I LOVED the second game) and to finish two Bioware games; Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect.

In the realms of painting miniatures I am taking a short break from the dwarfs and instead decided to try and finish off an older project. This is my Mordheim warband from a while ago. They are the Possessed warband and I have finally decided to work on these guys and try to get them finished off entirely. The mutants are done, my solo beastman is almost done which leaves the magister and the possessed. Oh, and to base the entire group. Then it is back to the Dwarfs.

Is Variety the Spice of Life, or do Too Many Cooks Spoil the Broth?

2011-03-29T12:08:00.000+01:00

Used without Permission

In this article I look at having lots of variation in your gaming is good, or whether it is just too much.

One thing I think most gamers have in common, except for the fact we all are gamers, is the sheer number of projects or at least ideas we have on the go. These projects can range from something small like a single miniature all the way up to an entire army. For example, I personally have over six major projects planned out. However, I am going to look at whether having lots of projects on the go is a good plan or if you can have too many.

Having multiple projects is usually a great thing, it give you range and variety. These two things are in my opinion are quite important to those who do a lot of painting. This links in with my post from the other day, about being motivated with your painting. The variety of projects you have tends to keep things fresh and interesting, allowing you to switch and change things up when you feel like it. Many people find that building and painting a single army can be tiring and boring, so slipping in the odd small project here and there is a way to make things interesting.

However, is having these multiple projects always a good idea? If you can remain focused they can be a nice respite during a long term project just for something different to do during the long haul. However, there is always the temptation to get side tracked, leaving things at the wayside, especially if you come across a really interesting project. There needs to be a balance with the projects you do, consider doing small parts of various projects to keep them all going. I find I have 'projectmania'. By this I mean I come up with various projects and ideas on a near weekly basis, many of which I will never touch. Here is a brief list of the major projects I want/have planned off of the top of my head:

Finish Dwarfs to 2000pts
Add more squads/fix damaged squads for my 40k Orks
Start my Fantasy Orc and Goblin Army
Start my 40k Space Wolf Army
Finish off my Mordheim Possessed Warband
Start another Mordheim Warband or two (Dwarfs, Orcs and maybe a human one)
Start my Orc Blood Bowl Team
Start my Dwarf Blood Bowl Team
Start a third Blood Bowl Team
Expand the Dwarfs
Paint the Fellowship of the Ring
Start a LOTR Force

So, as you can see I have many, many projects on the go. I do often find it hard to stick to one, especially if I get an idea for another army or get inspired by another one. I have to force myself to stick to a single project otherwise things would never get done and I'd be all over the place with small pieces of armies built or painted. I find I prefer to try and build then paint a playable force, or at least a force that can be added too quickly to make a simple force.

Another thing I find myself wanting to do is the multi-system idea. I currently have plans for only GW's big two; Fantasy and 40K. Although I want to spread into their smaller, less supported systems like Mordheim and Blood Bowl because they seem like a lot of fun. But more and more I find myself looking out at other systems; Warmachine, Hordes, Malifaux for example have all caught my eye more that once. But the problem, or point, at the moment is that I don't have the time, space or opponents to validate most of these 'expansions' into other non-GW games. Perhaps with time, who knows....

What I am trying to say is, I have too many projects. Each time I focus on one, I feel that I am letting down the others, pushing them aside for other reasons. It doesn't feel good. However, I also think this is currently due to me putting effort into getting my Dwarfs painted for August (so they can appear at an annual forum meet that I organise). So perhaps having the multiple projects is only a problem when you focus for too long on one of them? I plan, once the Dwarfs are done, to slowly build up armies and forces piecemeal. The main fact will be that I should then have two playable forces - Orks and Dwarfs for my main systems. But over time, when I don't have a deadline to work towards I should be able to progress slowly and build new forces/armies and add to my existing ones in my own time and thus feel better about juggling the projects I have in my hand.

Is this a case of too many cooks, or is the variety of spice, just right? Right now, I don't honestly know but I will sure as hell, let you know when I figure things out.

A Dwarfs Tale: From King to Clansman - Great Weapon Warriors

2011-03-23T21:27:00.000Z

Another complete unit for the marching Dwarfs. And my third warrior one to boot. Oh, and there are some current army pictures in there also...

I finally got some pictures taken of the finished unit and the army as of today.

First up, the unit filler. I think it turned out quite well, the greenstuff isn't that terrible with paint on it.

And I won't do a rank by rank picture because they have been seen before, but I am quite happy with the front rank and the banner. I went a different route with the banner this time. On the previous two units you'll see that I went for a more realistic looking axe. This time I decided to do a stylised axe. The axe icon will appear on ever warrior unit, just done in different fashions.

And because it has been demanded by several people, a couple of army shots.

So, there. I have changed my mind about the next choice for the dwarfs, it will not be the BSB. Instead, I have decided to do the 'stone thrower'. I am thinking of making it into a mortar rather than a stone thrower as I REALLY dislike the current GW model. It makes no sense and doesn't look all that good.

However, for a bit of a break from my dwarfs I am going to paint up a mini and if I do a decent enough job on it I will put it up for sale on ebay.

A Dwarfs Tale: From King to Clansman - A painting guide

2011-02-28T10:00:00.231Z

Another step in the growing of my dwarf army, I have decided to do a tutorial on how I paint my dwarfs. Click below to continue....

This guide might well be quite long, with lots of pictures. I felt like I needed to do something a little different this time and so I have catalogued how I paint a single dwarf warrior. But before we jump into the guide I have a little bit of preface I want to discuss.

I never paint miniatures one by one, unless they are character models. Instead they are done in batches of fives, each pinned to a cork. For those that understand why, this might seem like sucking eggs, but for those who don't; the cork provides me with stability. A cork allows me to turn the mini around to almost any angle without having to touch the mini itself, which of course means I can get to almost any part of it.

You will also notice that I leave the mini off from its base and the arm(s) off. The base I prefer to do separately and in doing so means I have no risk of getting paint onto a newly painted mini and will allow me to do anything special to the base if I want to. The arm(s) I leave off so that I can get to all the parts, as you will see with the finished product the arm (in this case a great weapon arm) crosses the body and makes painting parts of it difficult.

I always use a black undercoat. The dwarfs have a lot of metal, the black works very well with them. It does however make layering some of the colours pretty difficult to get a solid, even coat over. Black also gives me instant shading and is more forgiving than white I find.

Them all stuck to their cork bases...

The arms and their bases. Pinned enough apart to give me room to work.

There are six arms here because one already has his attached and I have two other dwarfs fully painted, minus arms already.

With that out of the way... onto the guide.

A quick acronym guide:
GW - Games Workshop
GWF - Games Workshop Foundation
GWW - Games Workshop Wash
VGC - Vallejo Game Colour
VMC - Vallejo Model Colour

The numbers in brackets represent the ratio between colours I have used.

Skin

Step One
This base colour is Tallarn Flesh (GWF) mixed with Calthan Brown (GWF). (1:1)

Step Two

This stage I washed the skin with Ogryn Flesh (GWW) to shade. I use to use a brown wash, for these dwarfs I found the red flesh tone to work better.

Stage Three

The first layer highlight I added Elf Flesh (GW) to the base layer, applying to to all areas of the face that are not shadows. (1:2)

Step Four

The final skin layer involves adding Skull White (GW) to the highest sections of the face. The cheeks, lip and nose for example. (1:2)

The Beards

You'll notice that there is no section on beards here. There is a reason for that. I have also uploaded a tutorial on the Trading Post about painting beards. The thing I find with beards is they are supposed to look varied and different, so each time they are not exact and I like to mix it up.

The Cloth

Step One

The base layer is Turquoise (VMC) and Chaos Black (VGC), it might take a few layers to get it smooth over the black undercoat. (1:1)

Step Two

In this layer I add more Turquoise, leaving some of the shade behind. (2:1)

Stage Three

The final, highlighting stage involves adding Skull White (GW) into the mix. (2:1)

The Sleeves

Step One

The basecoat is Sombre Grey (VGC) mixed with Chaos Black (VGC). (1:1)

Step Two

The basecoat is placed over this by mixing in more Sombre Grey (3:1), as usual leaving some behind to shade the recesses.

Stage Three

The highlight is added by a (2:1) mix of Skull White (GW). Apply to the raised edges of the cloth and I often add a thin line to the top of the arm near the shoulder.

Silver Metallics

Stage One

The first step here is to use Boltgun Metal (GW) as the base

Step Two

In this layer I have no photo, but I use a wash of Smoke (VGC) and Badab Black (GWW) (1:2). Layering it one either quite heavy, or do multiple thin ones. The idea is to shade the detail on the chainmail and the axes.

Step Three

This layer I add Chainmail (GW) to Boltgun and layer it up (1:2). The chainmail modelled on the mini can be hard to deal with, as too watery and the paint gets into the gaps. Drybrushing comes in use here, or careful overbrushing.

Step Four & Five

I didn't take photos of these two. The final layer is adding Mithril Silver (GW) to the mix (4:1), or as bright as you want it to be. The last bit to the silver is a final wash of very thinned down Badab Black, to tie all the layers together.

Bronze Metallics

Step One

The base to the bronze is a mix of Hammered Copper (VGC) and Scorched Brown (GW). Applied to the adornments on the wrists, helmet and any in the beard.

Step Two

Bright Bronze (VGC) is added to the base (3:1) for the next layer. Being careful, avoid the recesses.

Stage Three

Mix in a little bit of Mithril Silver (GW) for the highlight (1:2) and apply to the upper parts of the wrist, helmet and adornments.

Stage Four

A very liberal wash of Devlan Mud (GWW) is applied to the bronze sections, bringing the colours together and dulling them a little bit.

Woodgrain and Leather

Stage One

The first layer is a mix of Bestial Brown (VGC) and Vomit Brown (GW) (2:1). It takes a good few layers for this to go on well.

For the leather is is pretty much the only layer, the belt is the only real leather on them, for some there is a bag to shade but not many. They them go on to the third stage.

Stage Two

For the woodgrain layer, here I shade it. Using a mix of Chaos Black (VGC) and Burnt Umber (VMC) (2:1), I make thin lines along the wooden handles. These act as the darker parts of the woodgrain.

Stage Three

Deneb Stone (GWF) is added to highlight between the gaps of the shade (2:1) and finally finish it off with a light wash of Devlan Mud (GWW).

The cloak I haven't included in the pictures, but it is done by mixing Scorched Brown (GW) with Terracotta (GW) (2:1), then shaded with either the shade tone from the woodgrain or Dark Angels Green (GW) plus Chaos Black (VGC) (2:1), then finally adding Deneb Stone (GWF) to highlight (2:1).

And this is the finished Product...

Working...

2011-02-24T20:27:00.000Z

Just a quick update.

I am still working on my warrior unit, the first five are complete (barring bases) and I have just undercoated the next five. The missus has gone to Amsterdam with some friends for the weekend, so I figured to get some painting done (was playing Red Dead Redemption most of last weekend). I am homing to have these five done by Sunday/Monday.

Along with painting, I have decided to do a step-by-step painting guide for my Dwarfs. As well as a tutorial on beards/hair. These will go on the Trading Post as well, as part of The Workshop series I am running on there.

A Dwarfs Tale: From King to Clansman - Warriors with GWs

2011-02-06T02:29:00.001Z


Champion

Tonight I have managed to convert most the minis. Seven of them are unconverted, the BSB is just really got the book sans runes on top of it. Here are the rest....

Standard Bearer


Musician

A Dwarfs Tale: From King to Clansman - Unit Filler

2011-02-04T02:01:00.001Z

I have been working on my first ever unit filler, you'll see the pictures below. First of all though, I wanted to explain the terrible greenstuff work. If you have been following my progress at all, you'll see that I rarely use greenstuff (GS).

The reason is that I am not very good with it (see evidence below) and so get upset and distraught when it doesn't work. However, I realised that to a degree my skills have become stagnate. I find my painting has not progressed much, it is at a decent quality so I can't complain too much. The thing I am really not good at is converting. I shy away from these, especially using GS. So, I am going to endeavour to try and improve upon my skills with GS.

It will look bad for a bit, then hopefully when I improve and get practice more you will be able to see it. For now, here is my first attempt with some reworking. The model itself is from the miner boxed set. I removed the box at the back, and on top of the saddle itself. The backpacks are again from the miners kit I believe. I used some GS to attempt to fix up the damage done to the mule's tail in removing some unneeded stuff, as well as the back legs. I also decided that I wanted to have someone leading the mule, so it made sense for them to have some reins. I added them also. Overall, for my first real try it isn't bad. I hope to improve.

A Dwarfs Tale: From King to Clansman Part VI. - Thunderers Complete

2011-01-31T00:55:00.002Z

I have finally finished off the unit. Ten thunderers with a musician. Overall I am quite happy with them, I am reworking my recipe with the dwarfs - I have recorded the paints used and all that.

Also, you might notice some new links at the top of the page. These are links to my completed projects, tutorials and photo gallery. The 'Hobby' page is a little off set, because I cannot code with HTML, but I think it vaguely looks decent enough. I hope you enjoy! Oh, and I added the 'You might also like' widget. I like it. Just an attempt to try and improve the blog somewhat.

A Dwarfs Tale: From King to Clansman - Thunderers finished

2011-01-30T02:33:00.000Z

Another update for the Dwarf Tale 'project'. The Thunderers are almost complete. I have just one final thing to do, the bases.

I was going to take pictures of the beards, but forgot. I am quite happy with them all together, the beard tones worked really well. I am still experimenting with brown tones. I am actually struggling with getting a good basic brown tone, I often find that the highlights are too bright or too dark.

I noticed that with my dwarfs I have taken to doing some more extreme highlights - they show much better - and with the brown it just seems to change the tone too much, too bright. I am however finding some nice colours for hair with experimenting, and using colours NO ONE ever uses, such as vomit brown.

Tomorrow they should be finished, bases and all. Next on the list is 20 warriors, including a unit filler.

A Dwarfs Tale: From King to Clansman - Thunderers

2011-01-23T19:02:00.004Z

This is the first part of the newest unit. Five thunderers, minus bases.

Overall I am happy with them, the cloaks I am less happy with but overall good. I have been playing about with the recipes and recording them properly. I am quite proud of some of the beards, I tried different ways and they turned out well. I really like the tanned type of beard.

Mannfred Von Carstein - Complete

2011-01-17T02:37:00.002Z

I finally got around to finishing this guy off. I have enjoyed painting him, and got my first practice at verdigris on his staff. The horse I went for a charcoal tone with dark metallic armour. The base is basic but I think works quite well, the leaf litter works really well I felt.

A Dwarfs Tale: From King to Clansman. Part V - The List

2011-01-15T22:45:00.001Z

It has been a little while since I posted about my dwarfs, and I have made some decisions about the army. I realised that I wanted an army that was playable and done for this year.

Previously I was just building models and units as I felt like, this would have led to me having a very random and a possible unplayable army. So, I decided to plan out an army. It is 2000pts and gives me a good amount of space to expand outwards. Here is the list I have planned out.

Dwarf Lord - Great Weapon; Shieldbearers; MRoSteel, RoResistance, RoStone, MRoSpite (301)
Battle Standard Bearer - BSB; MRoGromril (115)
Runesmith - Shield, MRoBalance, RoSpellbreaking (147 )

Warriors [19] - Great Weapon, Shield; Full Command (215)
Longbeards [20] - Shields, Full Command (265)
Thunderers [10] - Shields, Musician (155)
Quarrellers [10] - Shields, Musician (125)

Cannon - RoForging (125)
Grudge Thrower - RoAccuracy, RoPenetrating; (130 )
Hammerers [18] - Full Command; MRoGrungi (296)

Organ Gun (125)

1999pts

It is quite a simple list, but I think it is effective at the points level it is. The first expansion to 2500pts will be to bulk some units up in size and then another character. I have some plans for certain minis. For example I want a lord with shieldbearers, however I HATE the Alric Ranulfsson mini. So, I need to figure out what mini to use; I have an idea how I want him to look but that is for a later post. I actually have most the minis for this list, it is just the Hammerers that I need, and at the moment I am unsure if I'll be buying the GW ones as I really dislike the minis. On the other hand, I am no good at greenstuff so that option might be out.

Moving the hobby along

2011-01-13T22:14:00.001Z

So, as I discussed in a previous post I am trying to advance my hobby a bit more. This year I want to complete my Dwarfs and at least get started on my Space Wolves. To help with this, I copied a great idea from Warpstone Pile. I have not copied his format exactly, being as I don't want to use the painting or modelling points but I have found that it is a great idea overall.

I have seen this thing done before, but never something that the 'author' gave out freely. It is useful for tracking your progress in various things, and you can change it to suit your needs. As I have done. This is interesting because I am very basic with Excel, but I have learnt some new stuff. The only thing I cannot do is get the 'scores' to update from adding a W L D like you'll find in the linked spreadsheet. Otherwise, I have kept the graphs, gaming and keeping track of what I have painted each month. It is interesting to see how well this goes and just how well I am doing with a) painting and b) gaming. So far I have a single game on here, a win for my orks against chaos space marines. And no minis done as yet.

In addition to this I have decided that I need to work towards a goal with my Dwarfs and Wolves, so am going to create an army list to follow. To help with the Dwarfs I have again played about with excel and created a worksheet to help me calculate the percentages of each 'grouping' as well as my total and points left. Seems useful, and hopefully I will have a dwarf list planned out by the weekend; along with a wolf list. These are just to give me something to aim for so that I have a decent army to play with, and then to spread into other stuff.

Aside from that, I am close to finishing Mannfred. He should be done by Monday/Tuesday, I have just his horse which is a charcoal grey with dark metallic armour, and his base to finish off and he can be sent off. The gaming group I attend is considering a small campaign using the Planetary Empires kit, which as it is mine, I shall be running. I am looking forward to this, it is going to be very basic but should be fun.

Also, I am trying to come up with good plans for The Trading Post. This includes at the moment a weekly top 5-15 Fantasy posts I can find. Alas, the week I plan this seems to be rather empty of them. :( If you see any good ones, email me and let me know.

Goals for 2011

2011-01-08T18:37:00.001Z

I decided to follow the trend and post up some aims for 2011, however I decided to avoid the term 'resolutions' and instead go for 'aims' or 'goals'. I think last year I had nothing to drive or guide me, my hobby was a little bit disjointed and I had little aim.

That isn't to say I did nothing. I restarted my dwarfs, got a blood bowl team sorted and made my first personal sale on ebay. I did not mange to get much done last year, this was due to having to write a dissertation in May, uni work before that. Following this was two moves where I had little time or chance to do any painting. I will be moving again towards the end of the year, but I have some months before that and so I hope to be able to achieve some goals between now and then.

- My first goal for this year is to get my dwarf army repainted to a good standard, and to get them to a playable level. By this I mean I would like to get them to at least 2000pts, I also want to use them to help me to improve my painting and converting skills.

- To sort out my orks. Over this last year I have found that many of them have broken - either from the bases or fallen arms. I do need to sort this out, I also want to improve them. I have some ideas for them, alongside fixing them I want to add to them.

- Start my next two armies. These will be Space Wolves and Orcs and Goblins.

- Attempt to finish off some projects I started a while a go. These are a Mordheim warband (Possessed) and perhaps a Orc Blood Bowl team if I can.

- I have been slowly reading through the Horus Heresy series (just finished Decent of Angels) and I really want to get to the Space Wolf novels but am forcing myself to read them in order. I actually liked Decent of Angels but some things did rankle with me. Such as the main character's easy acceptance of Luthor's announcement of his desire to 'rule' the Legion and to let Lion die. I would have expected a bit more that "I didn't know". And I did not believe that librarians existed then, unless this is at a time after the fact that they discover daemons and the things 'beyond the veil'.

- Get started on some LOTR minis. I have the Fellowship and the Moria Goblins from the Mines of Moria boxed set to paint before looking into more stuff. That said, I also need to look into exactly what forces I want to collect.

- Oh yeah... And I am trying to be frugal with my hobby. Um...

Mannfred Von Carstein; Pt III

2011-01-07T03:13:00.001Z

So, it has been a rather long time since I have gotten the chance to update this thread, and get working on painting once more. Christmas and New Years (I hope you all had a good one!) was pretty good, now back at home in Kent along with my painting equipment. I have wasted no time and jumped back into Mannfred. I need to get him painting being as he is for the Secret Santa project and should have been sent a month ago. =/ Anyway, I think Mannfred himself has been finished leaving just his horse and base left to paint. I am unsure of what to do the armour plates on the horse though, black would blend with Mannfred's black cloak.

Review - Firedrake by Nick Kyme

2010-12-24T23:09:00.000Z

It has been a while since I have had a new Black Library novel to read, but I knew that when I did get one I wanted Firedrake to be one of those I read. After reading the first novel Salamander (review can be found here), I knew I had to read the next in the series.

The review will be after the cut.

This is the second novel in the Salamander series "Tome of Fire" by Nick Kyme. It picks up partly where the end of the last one left us, with the main characters both taking different paths. One is raised to the ranks of the First Company (the Firedrakes), the other takes the path of the Librarian. I will not spoil things, as much as I can - if you have read Salamander then you will know who goes which way, if not - GO READ IT!!

However, parts of the book do not follow them, but rather it follows the events of the war/campaign that the 3rd Company are involved in against the Dark Eldar. In this war a number of marines are captured by the eldar and are hunted for fun. At the same time, some of the Friredrakes led by Forgefather Vulkan He'Stan are chasing after their lost brothers. There are some twists in the book that you will find interesting, the major twist I did see coming, but it is quite interesting. I like the build up of the Dragon Warriors plans, without the actual details being giving. It leaves you wanting more. I did like how Nick managed to handle the multiple aspects of the characters and not have it disjointed, as some novels I have read can be.

I make no attempts to hide it, but I love Nick Kyme's writing. Ever since he wrote the Dwarf novels I have found him to be a great writer. Firedrake has the same hallmarks of his hand upon the page. The battle scenes I found to be well placed and quite fluid with the action, with the space marines coming across as being super human, but also being vulnerable. One thing I would like to accredit Mr Kyme with, is selecting to write a novel about one of the near 'unsung heroes' of the Space Marines. Salamanders are one of those chapters that are different enough to be interesting. They are not mouth-frothing butchers or uncaring giants, but rather the Salamanders are practically humanitarians. They put human life above most things, themselves included. This I found to be a really interesting view of the marines, it is nice to see that marines can be different and while there is a gulf of changes between them and humans, it is quite cool to see that some retain a bit of humanity.

I look forward to the next one.

Rethinking Orks

2010-12-15T21:09:00.000Z

So, I have managed to get a few games in with my Orks and I enjoying playing them, however I feel like I need to re-work my list a little. First of all, here is my current list I have been using (1500pts).

Warboss; Power Claw, Kombi-Skorcha, Attack Squig, Eavy Armour, Cybork, Boss Pole

Big Mek; Burna, Kustom Force Field, Cybork

7 x Nobs; Eavy Armour, Cybork
1 x Waagh Banner
1x Painboy
1x Power Claw, Kombi-Skorcha, Boss Pole
1x Power Claw, Kombi-Skorcha
Trukk - Reinforced Ram, Red Paint Job

10 x Loota

12 x Slugga
Nob - Power Claw, Boss Pole
Trukk - Reinforced Ram, Red Paint Job

12 x Slugga
Nob - Power Claw, Boss Pole
Trukk - Reinforced Ram, Red Paint Job

20 x Shoota
Nob - Power Claw, Boss Pole
2x Rokkits

20 x Shoota
Nob - Power Claw, Boss Pole
2x Big Shoota

2x Buggy; Rokkits and Trakks

+ + + + + + + + + + +

I have found some squads to perform really well; the lootas and the Trakk's do really well. They might die (the latter especially) but they tend to complete their missions and are an annoyance. The shoota boyz have done OK, not amazing though. The nobz have killed almost anything they have faced in combat, but I think they have been targeting the wrong units.

I am considering dropping the two slugga units, so far they have underperformed. I have found that their vehicle is too easy to destroy, which in turn leaves them on foot. Once here they are too easily neutralised, numbering only twelve, and having only a 6+ save they will not last long under any form of basic arms fire. Not only this I have found them to be quite bad in combat. Yes, sure they have four attacks each on the assault, but they are still only I3, meaning against a lot of opponents they are going last or simultaneous. Again with the low save, they squad going solo will not last that long.

I have considered the use of Ard Boyz, but I don't think the extra 4pts a model for a 4+ save just doesn't seem worth the investment. It would allow them to weather some fire and save some wounds in combat, but not that much still.

The battle wagon is on my to-do list, and I would like to take it, the problem being of course removing the other trukks from the list makes the BW the single most popular target on the table. Is the solution to bring two of them?

Also, in terms of modelling, would you as a gamer be wary of models on a larger base? By this I mean, I have my nob squad on terminator bases, and would like to put the nobz in other squads on similar bases. Is this a good or bad idea? I really like it, but am worried that it would get complaints from others.

Mannfred Von Carstein; Pt II

2010-12-09T02:44:00.001Z

An update on Mannfred. At the moment, I quite like him. He is still well in progress, I have the metallics to paint and his staff. The top of it I am going for a stone look, I am not sure on the staff though. I think doing it grey would not work that well next to his surcoat and cloak.

Thoughts?

Mannfred Von Carstein; Pt I

2010-12-07T03:32:00.001Z

It has been a while. My light's bulb died recently, so I have to wait for a new one which arrived today. I have started work on my Secret Santa model, Mannfred Von Carstein. I like the skin, the blue flesh kinda looks like dead flesh to me. The red cloth doesn't show up that well in the pictures, but I like it's contrast with the skin; the cloak and jacket will most likely be black. The brown leather is just a basecoat, it will be shaded and highlighted properly by the end.

ahem

2010-12-03T21:11:00.001Z

A quick update, I have not been very active recently for various reasons. The foremost is because the bulb in my light blew, and I am waiting a replacement to arrive; so no painting. My current painting project is Mannfred Von Carstien, the older version. This guy:

I have really liked this model for quite a while, and I brought him ages ago. Why am I painting him? Well, each Christmas over at Librarium-Online.com I run a Secret Santa event; each member gives me their address and they are then given another member to paint for (without knowing the identity of their 'receiver'). This year, I have decided to go for Mannfred.

I was curious as to the colour scheme to go with, but after seeing the official miniature I am liking the scheme. I always wanted to include purple and red into the scheme, I just wasn't sure how to go about it. Now at least I have an idea on how to paint him. Once my light has arrived, then I will get a photo up.

Otherwise, I managed to get two games in the last month (I work alternating shifts; 6-2 then 2-10 and repeat. Meaning I can only game on the early shifts). One was against Chaos Space Marines, the second was against Tau. The Chaos game was almost a repeat of our previous game, objectives - table quarters. The game wasn't too bad, I managed to take out his two vindicators before they did much damage. A bad WAAGH roll left my Nobz short of assault on some Berzerkers which ended up costing me a squad of boyz sat on an objective. Other notable actions was some terminators (three) teleporting in, my lootas failing to blast them off the board at short range before them munching up a slugga squad in combat. The game ended in a Chaos win as he controlled one and in the final turn got close enough to another objective to stop me from grabbing a draw.

The Tau game was fun, but not that good for the Boyz. Kill points, Dawn of War. The bad started with one of my slugga squads assaulting some Kroot, then getting battered in it. Next time, I will be shooting them. They also later munched the second slugga squad before being broken from shooting. My nobz I made a big mistake with, I sent them to the far side of the table to combat some Broadsides rather than to the right side where they would have been more useful. Another bad point was where 20 boyz failed to beat 3 stealth suits in combat. Not a good show for the orks. The warboss however did show them how it was done, destroyed a hammerhead with the first strike, followed by wiping out all three Broadsides on his own. Not terrible. I won on Kill Points 7-4.

I have decided that I cannot justify buying any more miniatures for a while, however by a stroke of luck I remembered that I have some old Blood Angels at the parent's still; including a Land Raider (Godhammer), Predator (Las + Bolters) and at least one rhino. I am going to see if I can salvage anything for repatriation into my Space Wolves, saving me money. I am also going to go back over old projects; I have a Mordheim warband to complete; plenty of dwarfs to paint, orcs and goblin test minis to do; as well as repainting and adding markings/fixing plenty of my Orks.

LOTR: Strategy Battle Game - Review

2010-11-23T00:35:00.001Z

As you might know I have recently decided to pick up the LOTR:SBG and so this is my review of the game. I will start off with my thoughts on the LOTR boxed set - "The Mines of Moria", and then move on to the rules of the game itself.

The Mines of Moria The first thing I found to look at with this boxed set is the miniatures. What you get is the entire Fellowship of the Ring, 24x Moria Goblins (a mix of hand weapons, spears and bows), a cave troll and some plastic ruined terrain - including Balin's Tomb. These miniatures are all in plastic, and everything except for the Fellowship is clip together kits. Nice and simple. One thing I have found is that the Fellowship are really not that well cast. They don't look amazingly like the actors from the film or anything, but I suppose considering it is the basic kit it is forgiveable. For value, I think this is a nice start. You get good and evil, and a mix of heroes, basic models and a monster type creature. The terrain features are quite nice and simple as well.

Alongside this you get a little booklet and the rule book. The booklet is a good little introduction guide to the basics of the game, the moving, shooting and fighting phases of the game. A nice simple guide with the use of helpful diagrams. The manner in which it does this is through little scenarios, slowly bringing the rules in bit by bit. It is quite helpful and a good guide for beginners to the game, alongside this it has a very basic painting guide to the miniatures in the set. The rule book I will get to in a moment.

Overall I found the set to be a good start for the beginners. The miniatures didn't impress me that much, but they will do for their purpose. The rest of it works out quite decently. Something I would suggest for all new starters of the game.

Rule Book Review

The first thing I found upon my first read through the "Rules Manual" is how clear and concise it seems to be. Admittedly without playing any games I cannot say whether or not this is true, but I found myself understanding the rules quite easily. This is a nice change from the other major GW games, where the rules end up with just so much interpretation and arguments on how they work. I did find that overall, the rules are quite a bit more simple when compared to the other two games (40K and WFB), but when you think about this as being an entirely different game, and not a new take on the old systems which the above two are based off. If you think of it like this, the rules work really well and simple, leaving for a seemingly smooth and continuous gameplay. Another nice little addition that GW dropped into this rule book is the "editor notes" or the "tactical notes". These actually seemed quite useful, making some good suggestions, especially for a new player.

So, into the rules.

Going in phase order, we start with a new rule which I am very unfamiliar with. Priority. This rule I found very intriguing. Basically the order in which players move is not set, but rather you roll a dice and the winner gets to make the first actions in each phase for that rule (unless otherwise stated in the scenario settings). I love this rule, as it leads a more tactical situation. Now you can't set up your assaults or shooting an entire turn before them, you have to consider that your opponent moves right after you do, and can ruin your plans with a couple of moves. This leads me on to a HUGE change (to me as a 40k and WFB gamer) is how the turns are played out. In the other two it has always been; Player A, moves, shoots, assaults, ends turn. Player B; Moves, shoots, assaults, ends turn. Player A... etc. Not so in LOTR:SBG. Instead it goes like thus; Player A moves, Player B moves; Player A shoots, Player B shoots.. etc. This I find makes a difference and makes thing a lot more fluent, rather than the second player being forced to react to their opponent, they can pre-empt them with some good moves or charges. So the priority becomes an important thing to gain and a nice change to the "I go, you go" play many other games have.

The shooting I think is one place where the veteran GW games became worried about and claimed the over simplification of certain areas or rules. However, when you look at it it isn't that much of a huge change from the other ones. The model still needs a certain roll to hit, it is just not modified by anything but a base roll. It is rather similar to the 'To hit chart' in the other two. I quite like it, there is no need to work out what they need, it is on your profile from the beginning. Another change I like is that models who can fire multiple times (like powerful archers such as Legolas) can actually choose to fire each shot against a different opponent, and you can decide after you have rolled the wounding of the previous shot. A nice change from the others, where you have to fire everything against the same model/unit and if it dies in the first hit, the others are wasted. Again we come to a change from the usual GW format is the 'To wound' chart. It is the same for combat, but in LOTR you compare the strength (either the weapon for shooting or model for combat) to the model's 'Defence'. This defence stat represents how tough the model is, and also incorporates their armour. So for example Gimli has Defence 8 - representing his well crafted Dwarf Armour and his innate Dwarf toughness. Meaning his is very hard to wound unless someone has high strength. While a Wildman of Dunland only has Defence 3, as he lacks armour and his not as hardy as a dwarf or a hero. This means if you roll high enough to wound the model, it takes a wound - there are no armour saves for this game. It is a nice change and reduces the number of rolls to protect individual models, making the game seem quicker.

Combat is perhaps the biggest change from the other GW games. It is very simple, quick and easy. I can see why many gamers might dislike it when you are use to the mechanics of the other two games. In combat, you roll to attack, whoever rolls the highest wins combat; their opponents must move back and are then wounded. Wounding is done exactly as above for the shooting, so again it is quite quickly. The special rules for the various weapons in the game are nice, nothing too complicated and some very useful rules that requires thought on how to play the individual models. I like the rules included for obstacles making them very good to be defending even against multiple opponents. Other mechanics I like are the trapped rule where surrounded models take a lot more wounds, something useful to remember when using cheap troops to surround tougher and advanced models or heroes. The way combats are separated I found interesting, a nice unique touch, though I can see if being hard to identify sometimes who are in single, while others are in multiple.

I briefly wanted to talk about the magic in the game. As all know from the films and novels magic is quite prevalent in Middle Earth, there are some powerful wizards and beasts made almost from magic themselves. In game mechanics each magic user gets a set number of spells which they can use - once per turn - and alongside the spell's range in their profile it has a score (eg 3+) this is what is required to cast that spell. It uses a point of Will to cast (more on that in a moment), in addition something I really like is the target can attempt to resist as long as they have some will points left. This I like as 40k bothers me that psychic powers are auto cast as long as you pass the test, and only a few number of minis are able to stop them. I like it when these powers can be resisted, it makes it more interesting; again bringing in some slight tactics - is it worth letting it go or should you burn a point of Will to defend against it.

Heroes are quite important in this game. Even more so that 40K or WFB. Here, not only are many of them beasts in combat, shooting or with magic, but they also have the ability to inspire troops to do other out of place effects. These generally come from Heroic Actions. These vary, but are moving, shooting or fighting. These are done out of sequence, allowing these models to charge, shoot or fight before the opponent which in turn can alter the tactics of them. In addition, with the first two, they can inspire the close by models to either move with them, or to shoot. Very useful. They also have Might, Fate and Will points. These can be used to do Heroic actions, alter certain rolls or to cast magic. It also makes them hard to kill, if the model has a high store of these points. It makes keeping them alive important and makes them even more important in the game.

Winding this up now, I found that the rule book has everything you need to play the game, the special rules or advanced rules add some more interesting tactics and rules to the game (I like it that mounts can remain in the game, and then be remounted during the battle). No need for expansion, and even then there are not many special rules or any really confusing ones I found in there. I really like that they had some very well written rules for fighting in sieges, including rules for destroying sections, ladders, battering rams, siege towers and explosives (aka the mines from The Two Towers at Helms Deep). Another nice addition, is the inclusion of the forces. At the back of the book it has nearly all of the stats, options and point costs for models in the game - including various versions of the characters in the game. I have noticed that it doesn't include everything (Dwarves are noticeably missing), but GW has included the 'cheat sheets' for all of their expansions on the website that has nearly everything you need include these forces in your games. Which is a nice change. I did notice that it lacked scenarios in the book, which was a bit of a shame but it is quite minor as buying the Legions of Middle Earth supplement or looking on GW's website to pick them up.

Closing Thoughts

Overall, I really like the mechanics and system. It is really different to the usual GW games, and with it it has a fresh and new feel to it. I had no trouble understanding or following the rules, even the advanced rules were quite easy to follow. The basic rules I found great and it does seem like a quick, simple game. However, I do not think that this simple view should be seen as too simple or basic, but rather it brings with it it's only challenges. I do look forward to getting in to this game, though when I get around to it I am unsure as there are various projects on the go.

I am as of yet unsure what force to have, but I am leaning towards Dwarves (for obvious reasons) and then perhaps Moria Goblins to make the most of the 'Mines' boxed set. Then I like the idea of a Rohan and White Hand force. This will depend on many things, I want to check up on things like guides. At the moment, I just plan to slowly paint the Fellowship and think about things.

Look what arrived yesterday!

2010-11-20T13:17:00.000Z

So, it finally came, and I will soon have my review on the boxed set along with my thoughts on the rules of the game - once I have read the "Rules Manual".

A Dwarfs Tale: From King to Clansman. Part IV - Cannon

2010-11-15T21:55:00.000Z

So, I got hold of a base - the screaming bell one - and after some playing about with miliput I came up with the idea of making a small wall/defence to 'protect' the cannon. I quite like it, I am hoping to do better with the Organ Gun.

I hope you like it!

Dwarf Cannon

2010-11-13T13:59:00.000Z

It has been a while, I know. I have been working, painting and playing on Final Fantasy XIII.

I have almost finished my cannon, the minis are painted they just need basing. I have ordered a Screaming Bell base, I think it is too big but I will see when it arrives. I have also ordered more shields.

For the crew I tried out some brighter highlights, it worked quite well though they don't show up amazingly in the pictures as they were taken quickly. I still need to work on my metallics, the cannon does not look that good. Here are some pictures, once I get the base sorted I will add more and better ones.

Homemade - Dwarf Upgrade: The Book of Grudges

2010-11-11T11:37:00.000Z

The dwarfs are known for having the most well known book in the Warhammer world; The Book of Grudges. There is one that the High King holds that encompasses the entire Dwarf race, but each dwarf city has their own books. Thus, I think it would be fun and fluffy if it was an upgrade option. Here is my idea:

The Book of Grudges
Of all races Dwarfs hold grudges the best, and take them so seriously that they have a book to keep track of these wrongdoings against them. In times of battle the bearer of these books has been known to take to the field. Held in his hands is one of the books, during the fight he bellows out the wrongs caused by the dwarfs opponents against them, whipping the Dwarfs into a rumbling hatred.

The Book of Grudges is an upgrade option for one Thane in a Dwarf army, at the cost of +50pts.

The unit in which the bearer of the book leads has the Eternal Hatred rule (hated lasts for all turns of combat), and in addition any dwarf unit within 6" gains hatred against all of the opposing army (normal hatred).

************

What do you think? I was considering allowing him shieldbearers which would increase the range of the Hatred, maybe to 12"? I don't think he's all that powerful really, and I don't know if he's too costly - 25pts or 50pts?

My thoughts on LOTR

2010-11-05T22:29:00.000Z

I was wandering about the blogsphere and I remembered this post over at Cursed Treasure about why the Lord of the Rings games lacks gamers. I viewed the comments and there were many interesting points raise, and I felt like addressing my thoughts on these points.

To start, I thought I would drop my thoughts on the original posted question. Why don’t I play LOTR? I have been thinking on this, and I think I fell into the same pitfall of most people. When the game was announced it was on the back of the film trilogy, and GW just seemingly threw it in the face of gamers proclaiming it to be their third ‘Big Game’ alongside the ancient Warhammer Fantasy and its younger brother, Warhammer 40k. It just didn’t sit right with me. To me a game becomes popular by the gamers and supporters, not because the company ‘Says so’. However, up until early this year I had never even read the rules to the game. I unfairly judged the game, just like pretty much every other gamer. I jumped right on the band wagon of “this game sucks” and grabbed the tail of the “its stealing time and space in the company” donkey. I think it also came down to the idea of how GW first pitched it. It was seemingly marketed to begin with as just a way of replaying the famous parts of the novels/films, seeing if you could change the outcome of the series. This worked while the films were new and interesting, but as they waned, the idea stuck that this system was limited. We all know the outcome of the game, and all know that nothing changes when we replay these ‘famous’ events. I think this was a big pitfall for me. I like games that have wider range and its ending is not set in stone.

There was also a point brought up in the comments above about lack of customisation, and I agree. The other two ‘big games’, and even the spinoffs, are very open ended. You can pick a generic hero for you faction and fashion a whole history for them, arm them how you wish and let them grow. In LOTR, most characters are known and even then if you can take unnamed ones you can’t really make them a great hero of their faction because Tolkien’s world is very set and lacks any great manoeuvrability for this purpose. So instead you end up with characters leading factions, but from what I understand race doesn’t matter. By this I mean, you could have a dwarf character leading elves or visa versa because they are in the ‘good’ faction. You can have northern orcs being led by evil southern men. And so forth. It just seems a little bit like having your cake and eating it, leaving very little to skill or having flaws in the force if you can just take other models to fill in those gaps. One other thing, it kind of goes hand in hand with the lack of customisation comments above, the heroes, or the models in general, they give you little freedom when it comes to equipment - as far as I can tell.

My final negative point here is the scenarios. I have nothing against scenario wins, except when they are “if X faction does achieve Y criteria they win. If they do then Z wins”. These bore me and strike me as one sided. However this isn’t my gripe, as I am sure there are different ways to play the game, but it is rather how GW marketed them. The whole “replay the LOTR and win for evil” etc is fine, but has limited appeal. This is something I feel has put a lot of gamers off picking up the rules and actually having an opinion that is not just built off of instant dislike or hearsay. I think win games people like the idea of it being set in a well known surrounding (LOTR, or Star Wars for example) and refighting these epic battles are interesting but after a while, it gets boring and you need more exciting things to do with your minis rather than replay these scenes. I am sure there are more scenarios and more varied ones available to play, but how GW made them come across has always seemed like there was just the replaying of the story. Not fun.

So what does this all mean? Well… I am going to put my money where my mouth is. So to speak. I intend to buy the LOTR: SBG rules and have a read of them, to see what my real thoughts on the matter are. I have read them before, but I want to re-read them. This does not mean that I’ll be starting up a force for the game (though, I have already considered some options already) but I will definitely read and comment back with actual opinions based on fact and discuss my thoughts on the topic of the game itself. Look forward to this in the future.

A Dwarfs Tale: From King to Clansman. Part III - Warriors

2010-10-23T15:12:00.000+01:00

So, I have finished my warrior unit. I actually had these done last weekend but a change of shift at work (had to work 6-2, then this coming week back on to 2-10 and then back to... etc) meant that I was lazy. I am not happy with the banner, but I'll discuss that after the pictures. Here:

Right then. What don't I like? The banner. I just couldn't get the axe right and so to me it looks quite childish and flat. So, I have been reluctant to show that. Now I don't care that much and instead am just concentrating on the next set of tasks to do. I am aware the pictures aren't that good, they were taken quickly but there isn't much to see. I was quite happy with the unit until the banner icon went on. The champion - to the left of the banner - has a bronze helmet and horns. Something I am planning on keeping for the army; champions have bronze and an helmet adornment of some form. The musician is OK, it actually turned out quite good.

For the top of the banner I went for the aged book look - again it is almost impossible to see - and it turned out OK. I think I have a new method for my metallics, need to try it again, if so it works well and looks good. It is basically Vallejo smoke ink and badab black wash. It seemed to look better than just plain black to me.

My next project is the cannon. I intend to add it to some form of base, being as now I don't have to worry about minimising the number of attackers. I need to check the sizes and such to see what it would look good on, and what would fit it all. I also am going to pick up some more old dwarf shields. For £20 I should get enough to do about 4x20 dwarfs. I have realised that I am not doing much converting - mainly because dwarfs don't lend themselves well to it - and might have to try a bit more on some of the stuff. I have upped the number of units I am doing in this "batch" to include an organ gun and a thane. I am trying to start going through my armies in this manner. Painting some stuff and then move on to the next. Will see how it goes.

One thing I have noticed is that I am rushing. When painting my warriors I didn't care about some bits or pieces. I feel this is to "please" folks online. This is not suiting me though. So, now I am going to work at my speed and hopefully pull out some better looking dwarf minis in the future.

Where does it go...?

2010-10-20T20:51:00.000+01:00

Well, I am sure you'll all have noticed that I have not posted much, this last week I have not had any internet access; a slight problem with our connection. This has now been finished, as you might have gathered. What have I been up to?

I now have a job, finally. Working in a warehouse making plastic items, it isn't a bad job. I have shift work though, so for this week I am on earlies (6am-2pm) and next week I will switch to lates (2pm-10pm) and then back again etc. This does mean that I will only be able to get a game in ever other week, which sucks but is better than nothing. For some reason the guys at the group believes me to be a 'rules guru', and keep asking me questions. It is odd considering that I have probably played less games than they have. But is quite cool still. =D Life down in the south is quite cool. It is a nice place, I have been to Canterbury a couple of times, it is pretty and the local area matches it. I am yet to make many friends down here but I am working on it. Other than this I am getting on with painting, along with playing on the X-Box some. I have recently finally picked up Red Dead Redemption and Final Fantasy XIII. I am yet to play RDR but I will do. It looks fun. I am not a huge fan of the GTA series but this is different. It's COWBOYS. I am loving FF13 so far, but the combat system is getting some use to.

Well. Painting wise I have finished my 16 warriors, hopefully getting pictures up tomorrow or later today. I will discuss these more in detail there. I have now also undercoated my cannon and crew, these will be going on a base of some kind. I have also planned out small lists for various projects I want to do. One of these is to touch up my orks, mainly add some detail work to them. The problem is that when the squads gets close it can be rather hard to spot who is with who if they are all similarly armed - ie 2 slugga or shoota squads next to one another. So, my plan is to go back and add some form of squad identifier to them. Something like different coloured dags or checks on shoulders or cloth etc. Something obvious that can be spotted in the confusion of melee and so forth.

Almost...

And talking of orks. I got an actual game with them yesterday. Yes. A game! My first one at this gaming group and first since the beginning of August. This was Capture and Control against a Chaos Marine force. He had; 2 squads of berzerkers, one had Kharn leading it. A small squad of plague marines.All mounted in rhinos Two obliterators, a vindicator and a daemon prince with.... yes. Lash. In return I flooded the board with green. This was pretty much all I have painted. 2x 20 shootas. 2x 12 sluggas in trukks, 8 nobs and a warboss, 2x rokkit trakks. And 13 lootas.

His objective was pretty much centre of his deployment, mine was kept back and aptly was placed in an ork village. I won't go blow by blow, but it was very close. Some highlights were my nob squad and his kharn led 'zerkers battering each to hell before kharn got smooshed. His daemon prince charging my 20 boy squad alone, killing a few before getting charged by the warboss and remaining nob. Who then caused only a few wounds with their claws before the weight of 20+ boyz attacks pounded him into mangled flesh. The game stood on a knife edge as to whether I could contest his objective or not. Mine was safe. He was left with only a obliterator and a handful of plague marines to defend it. I struggled to find units big enough to weather the storm and in the end we had a trukk and a trakk sat on it. He JUST managed to take out both and stop a small squad of boys (at this point about four left) from sneaking onto it in the final turn. It was great fun and very close.

Looking at it, I have learnt that the orks are OK in combat. They win by virtue of weight of attacks, not hard hitting ones. And they HAVE to assault to do damage. I2 and S3 is not the best combination in tandem with a 6+ save. The nobz are pretty good, they hit hard and have lots of attacks. I need to be a bit more thrifty with the wargear options for them to make the most out of wound allocation. The warboss performed OK, fluffed a fair few of his attacks though. The lootas performed well as usual, getting some nice shots off and making the daemon prince keep his head down. I also need to be more careful with the placement of my transports. Two out of the three - including the nobz trukk - got taken care of quite quickly. The last, I should have really tried to keep it hidden so I could have gone for a last turn boost for their objective. Otherwise, I think it went OK. I need more practice, but it was rather enjoyable. I am considering next time, dropping three lootas and taking a single suicidal deffkotta with rokkits for outflanking and pot shots at vehicles.

Finally, I think I might need to get a new carry case. the one I have at the moment is good - A figures in Comfort case - but is rather soft and I fear the layers get knocked about a bit and in turn I have many orcs with broken arms or have come off the bases. This will depend on money and so forth, but hopefully in the future I can see about this.

A Dwarfs Tale: From King to Clansman. Part II - The Basics

2010-10-07T21:32:00.000+01:00

PART TWO

So, picking up from where I left off – The New Army. I decided a while ago that I wanted to make them stand out, to be MY dwarfs. With this in mind, I went about looking for a good colour scheme. I didn’t want to do the typical colours, which for dwarfs are red, white, blue and green. Usually it is white and… this I did not want. I wanted a scheme that stood out, but did not call in the Gay Pride Parade with its choice of colours. I did originally do about five dwarfs in a light grey and light blue scheme, but it just didn’t seem to suit them. In my opinion, I have always found that dwarfs look better in darker colours; which is why the 6^th ed GW scheme of Dark Angels Green and Brown worked really well. It had an earthy feel about it. I wanted my dwarfs to have some of this feel without them falling into the ‘typical looking’ dwarf army trap. I believe I have achieved this.

My scheme uses grey as the darker colour to help bring the feel of hard, stone or earthy tone to the look. The blue colour is actually turquoise, a colour I feel is underused in Warhammer. I also felt that it worked really well with the mid-dark tone grey (Shadow Grey), neither of them would blend into any beard colour I am going to use and they are strong enough that they stand out quite well. I am looking forward to seeing how it looks on mass (I currently have 15 warriors, 12 Quarrellers, 10 warriors, a thane and a runesmith painted with more warriors, Thunderers and a cannon to go). There is, of course, the utility colours going in, I am still playing about with some stuff but I am slowly getting it sorted out. For example, I know that the secondary metallics will be bronze for the most of the army. My characters and elites will most likely have gold for their main colours; to show their elite..ness. I need to work on the silver metallics, they don’t quite look right at the moment. Otherwise, I am happy with their overall look and feel. I am pretty happy about the bases, my Greenstuff Flagstone Stamps, work quite nice however they are not level or regular. In some ways this is good, they all look consistent but up close some a rather messy; that I need to try and sort out properly. The colour tone I am also playing with. The first set of bases (as you’ll be able to see later i.e. Below) are too light, the newer ones are quite a bit darker and I think look better.

There was one big thing I wanted to do with my dwarfs was freehand. I am sick and tired of not doing this because I cannot do freehand. So, I decided that the only way to sort that was of course to do it. The more I do it, hopefully, the better I become. So, the dwarf shields and unit banner will all have some image painted on them. I’ll come to the banner in a minute, for now I would like to discuss the shields. I HATE the shields that come with the warrior boxed set. I like the designs, but the fact you cannot choose to add these icons to them is annoying. I dislike that a bunch of the plastic fantasy kits that GW produced in 7^th ed took a lot of choice away from the hobbyist. The shields also, to me, don’t feel dwarfish. I have never thought as them as being the convex shape GW made them, but rather a big flat wall of hardened steel. I like the flatter shield design, and I have a plan for my Ironbreakers shields also (if there isn’t new ones by the time I get round to them). So, my shields are done using the old 6^th edition dwarfs shields. These give me a nice big empty space to paint a design on (mine is two inverted V’s being split on one side by an arrow – they represent mountains and the arrow is the ‘delving spear’). However, to do these shields I have to get hold of these shields. I can buy them from GW for £2 for eight (two sprues of four), or I can wait and return home and hope to yank the icons from some others off the arms of the older dwarfs. I am not sure yet.

Right, I said I would return to these. The banners. Again, I want to practice my freehand skills and being as the dwarfs are pretty much beard there is little room for painting any sort of design on. The banners I have decided to separate by design, by this I mean I have broken them down as thus…

Warriors – Axe designs

Thunderers – Handguns

Quarrellers – Crossbows or Arrows

Miners – Pickaxe

Hammerers – Hammers

These are the ones that I have planned out, the others I haven’t yet decided. I decided that these banners will have their ‘types’ “icon” on them in different manners. Or I did plan to do this. Then, I kinda struggled to think of different methods apart from – single and crossed “icon”. Not sure how to do these, I might add different icons to the main one.

One thing I have said about this army is that I want to make conversions. The problem is GW in their infinite wisdom decided to make them three part models – front, back, arm. That pretty much removes all the chances of doing converting without the extensive use of greenstuff. I am not ready for that yet, but I hope to try more and maybe get use to using the stuff. In the meantime, I have some metal dwarfs from various places I might have a go at converting. I have mixed views on metal minis. They look great, but hard to convert. =/

Anyway, I think that is enough “confab” for today and onto some pictures. This first bunch is of the ones I have previously done.

Thane

Runesmith - Converted

Warriors

Quarrellers

And this is the new – half done unit, there is six more dwarfs to do including the command. I have now decided that my veterans (champions) will have a helmet adornment, horns, wings or something like that. To make them stand out.

Elf. Just an elf.

2010-09-30T18:46:00.000+01:00

Right. I have been working on an [I]elf[/I]. I am OK with it, I don't mind him but he's not the best model I have painted. I am looking as to whether or not sell him on ebay, I have a base to do for him. I painted him in more muted colours, I wanted him to be elfy but not very bright blue or red like the usual elf schemes. I am not fully sold on the cloak, I need to practice more at blending and the sword looks a little washed out. Other than that, he's OK.

Oh, and I might try selling the warrior priest again.

Bugman from Bugman's Bar

2010-09-26T16:38:00.000+01:00

Anyway, he is now finished. Have a look...

I am now actually on to my next project, and... it's a single elf mini. I might try and sell him on ebay, along with the warrior priest again. Not sure yet though.

Bugman from Bugman's Bar

2010-09-26T02:18:00.000+01:00

I have had this fellow in my box for some time, and well, I saw an opportunity to get him painted. He is almost done, just the piece of flooring he came on to paint. Overall, I am pretty happy with him, the skin and the beard I really like. The beard was done using my usual blonde method, but I didn't add golden yellow into the mix, made it a bit more natural and more sandy blonde.

The only thing I am not fully happy with is the gold. It just doesn't look right, and I have painted, washed and repainted it too many times to mess about with it any more. I just need to practice my gold more. The silver on the axe also came out not fully to my liking - and might look under highlighted.

This is just a mini, a really fun one to paint and he'll be glued to his base for display. Getting in the mood for more dwarfs (I have 16 warriors and Thunderers to paint next and a cannon).

FINALLY!!

2010-09-24T22:31:00.000+01:00

So, it has been three months and a lot of um... excuses from me, but finally today it happened. My table arrived. Oh yes... KUFFY IS BACK IN BUSINESS!! Well, painting anyway. So, I have a picture of my painting table all nice and newly set up today. And yes, I have started on a miniature. I won't say what just yet, but as you can see from the pictures below I have two choices... what am I doing? :D

Look at all the boxes!

What is my next project?

A Dwarfs Tale: From King to Clansman. Part I - The Beginning

2010-09-19T15:19:00.001+01:00

As readers of my blog(s) might well know, my first and main army for Warhammer fantasy is Dwarfs. I am in the process of rebuilding my dwarf army, this means repainting, converting and adding my own fluff. So, with this in mind I decided to start a small little series on my blog. This series will follow my progress in building this dwarf army.

So, the first part I felt like doing was the background into the beginning of my dwarfs and how I got here.

A long time ago, over a decade now, I found the game Warhammer fantasy. I knew nothing about it, not a single thing, but it looked like a lot of fun. So, come Christmas my dad arrives with a small package; within it held a fully painted dwarf army. Fast forward to 6^th edition, the new plastic dwarfs are released with a new book. My army increases, more dwarfs sprout along with a new colour scheme. I did, like a lot of dwarf players in 6^th, I copied the studio scheme – this was green and brown (Karak Hirn). However, this did not pen out well with the previous miniatures I had; pretty much none of them had a similar scheme so it was a bit haphazard. The new miniatures though looked much better than the old ones and so I stuck with the nice scheme of green and brown.

This was not the end of the colour schemes. After this, GW released the newer – and better looking plastic kits. Along with these new dwarfs came a new scheme. This time I went with blue and khaki. I liked this scheme, it was very dwarf seeming and worked really well. This scheme did pose a problem. Lots of dwarf players also liked this scheme, and so the blue and khaki colours became rather popular. So, we arrive now. I have settled on a new scheme, it is different and I don’t expect many dwarf players to use my scheme either. With the colours of my dwarfs sorted, I have sad down and worked on some fluff for my dwarfs. I know many gamers don’t care about fluff; I however plan to make this dwarf army last for a very long time. And because of this, I am giving them a long background along with certain named characters.

I have the intention to make this dwarf army HUGE. I have plans to make this army my main dwarf army until I stop the game. Looking at the list of dwarf miniatures I possess it is quite the task; however I am aware that I need many, many more dwarf units (I have a lot of characters, including the older special characters from the last few editions).

That is it for now. At some point I might post up my dwarf collection (just a list, it would be many, many pictures) and you can see just what I have. Oh, and just as a warning… this is going to be a very long process. I hope to get started on some dwarfs soon, once I have my painting area assembled and gotten back into the swing of things.

Podcast review - Garagehammer, episode 8

2010-09-14T13:16:00.000+01:00

This is the first time I listened to this podcast, but I have heard of them about. And as luck would have it, this episode discusses my favourite Fantasy topic.. DWARFS!

Now, this podcast comes across to me as being a very laid back ship. I didn't get the feeling that they were geared for tournament play like many of the other podcasts you can find on the net. I think this is a great difference, I really liked how laid back they were. For example when discussing their army lists, they didn't go for all the more powerful options but rather they sounded quite fluffy and fun. I enjoyed the general discussion they had over their local gaming and stuff, and the "Phoenix Prince" section was an amusing and interesting touch. One nice point I did enjoy, was that they avoided swearing or cursing. I personally don't mind that much in general, but this makes it more family friendly and does just show that you don't need to swear all the time to have fun. It makes a nice change.

I really enjoyed the very comprehensive discussion of the dwarf army book, by a rather experienced dwarf general. There were some nice comments and ideas, a lot of which I am sure most dwarf players would agree with. They spent a great deal of time on each army option, giving a good strong description of each option they have and explaining the units roles and rules. I would say if someone is looking to get into a dwarf army, this section of the podcast is a great way to learn how they work.

I really enjoyed the podcast, I am thinking of making this a regular feature for my painting times. Go listen! But be warned, their shows aren't short!

You can find them at: http://garagehammer.net/

A quick update

2010-09-10T00:20:00.002+01:00

Right so, since the last update I have moved half the length of England and now am living in the seaside town of Broadstairs in Kent. It's not bad. We are yet to get the internet connected, however there are a bunch of networks that we can connect to and use (and more are legally done!). I still lack most of my stuff, that arrives a week on saturday, so no painting just yet. However, I have assembled a number of dwarfs, namely - 16 warriors with hand weapons, 16 thunderers and a cannon (all kindly donated by PapaJJ in a very gentlemanly give away he had on his blog). Some of these have been very slightly converted. Like the warriors all have axes - started off accidentally but looks good - some of which are converted from great weapons and some small changes to the command and such. The thunderers are just a normal unit, much like the cannon. So I have stuff to paint when it all arrives.

I also went to the local gaming group, just to see what it was like. It's small, but there seem to be a nice bunch there. Hopefully I can make some friends with these guys and get some actual gaming done! In addition to this, I am trying to add or write my dwarf fluff to give it character. So far it is not that good, but I am just trying to get down the basic structure and build a better one on top of that.

A post? YES! A POST!

2010-08-09T02:16:00.000+01:00

Sorry about the lack of posting folks. I have been doing very little GW based stuff at the moment so I haven't had much to post about. Everything is in boxes ready to be moved down south (which should be happening end of the month). However, this weekend was spent at Warhammer World along with some very nice fellows from my home forum; Librarium-Online and a very fine weekend it was indeed. Loads of fun and games were had, and here are my photos from it :

http://s198.photobucket.com/albums/aa172/Kuffeh/LO%20Meet%202010/

Loot!

2010-07-11T18:00:00.000+01:00

Also, I won some funky loot today. A contest over at diceRolla blog was giving away an entire chaos army. For free. Now that is quite the haul. I did not win however, PapaJJ (the blog owner) has decided to give away a bunch of prizes to each of the eight entries. So, what did I win? Here..

Kuffeh - Are you still actively working on your Dwarves? If so I've got a few boxes of basic dudes that I'd like to send to you. It's one each of the Dwarf Warriors, Dwarf Thunderers/Quarrellers, and Dwarf Cannon/Organ Gun box sets. A few weeks ago I opened them for the first time in search of drinking mugs that I could use for my Stonecutters. Otherwise they are untouched as I didn't see anything helpful for that project. I've also got a new Gyrocopter that I'd like to include if you're interested.

How awesome is that? So, when I get the chance to start painting once again these will be put to a great use. :D Now THAT was a give away and a half.

Auction Over

2010-07-06T14:35:00.000+01:00

Well, I would happily like to report that my Dwarf Blood Bowl team raised me a total of £57. =D My first personal ebay auction and I think it worked out quite well.

2010-06-30T12:38:00.000+01:00

I would just like to point out that the dwarf blood bowl team is up on ebay still, with just over three days left. If you'd like to own them, then please bid! They are currently going for a slightly disheartening £21. :(

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=300440188059

Blood Bowl Auction

2010-06-23T15:06:00.000+01:00

I have finally gotten around to this, and here is the auction for the Dwarf Blood Bowl team. Go bid my friends. -__^

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=300440188059

Modelling Mayhem

2010-06-23T14:04:00.000+01:00

A brief post here, sorry for the lack of posting. I have moved back with the parent's for a little bit and there is no room for me to be doing any real hobby stuff here unfortunately. I will try and be a bit more active with The Trading Post.

This post however to to mention an addition to both of my blog's banner exchange. This is the online store, Modelling Mayhem. The site is a cheap alternative site to buy all your hobby needs from - from GW to the newer Mantic and even battlefoam. So when you are looking for a discounted place to pick up your hobby tools, you can't look any further than:

Blood Bowl Dwarfs, Complete!

2010-06-12T00:32:00.000+01:00

I finally finished these little fellows. The team currently stands at 12 players, 1 star player, 4 markers. I also have better pictures of the players, to be used for the ebay sale. I will not get around to this for another few weeks, next week is packing and moving week. So, this might be my last bit of painting for a short while. :( That aside... the markers:

And a better shot of the 'Turn' marker's wood grain:

I am still getting the hang of woodgrain. It looks decent this time though, so I am quite pleased.

Overall, I am really pleased with how they have turned out. The entire team is good for a tabletop quality to me. I hope it sells. I will be back with a link to the ebay auction when it is up and ready. :)

Blood Bowl Dwarfs, the full team

2010-06-07T18:36:00.000+01:00

Just a quick picture of the full team. Just the icons missing, which are now undercoated.

Update for the Trading Post

2010-06-07T05:07:00.000+01:00

This is cross posted from the Trading Post Blog I also host:

Hey there,

Sorry about the lack of posting here, I have been sort of chilling with the house in the last few weeks we have left here. I now move out on the 18th June, so not long left to be packing. So I am going to be busy over the coming few weeks, along with the translation to the parent's for a month or two before the move the Canterbury in Kent.

This combined with the lack of anything gaming really happening (except some painting) has left this blog dry and parched. I am hoping to get something really fun in this week for you all, something I am enlisting my housemate to help with and have been wanting to do for a while. Another problem that I have encountered is the lack of blogs for the Trader of the Week series to use. Any new Fantasy based blogs you can dig up and push my way would be grateful, or even your own if I have not seen to yours already.

My final piece of information to add here is that I have made a forum for this blog. Why? I'm not sure, but I have. It's a generic Fantasy blog, like the blog, and well... it's there. If you wish to join, please do and enjoy a forum that will be fun and friendly. The link is: http://thetradingpost1.freeforums.org/index.php At the moment it is empty and bare, I will be playing about with things. If it is a success, then I will pay the small amount of money it requires for the reputation system to be used as well. However, I am not rushing into that due to the funding I have at my command and the not-so-distant moving.

So, that is all. I hope to get things moving when I actually have anything to add. If you have anything you'd like to post about on the blog, or feel you can regularly contribute, please drop me an email and we can discuss it.

Dwarf Blood Bowl Team - Star Player Grim Ironjaw

2010-06-05T19:58:00.000+01:00

The final player has been completed, the dwarf star player Grim Ironjaw. I enjoyed painting him, he was quick to do as well. I really liked the skin, I am getting a bit better at it look right, I think.

Dwarf Blood Bowl Team - slayer

2010-05-31T02:40:00.000+01:00

Right. The final player in the boxed set. The slayer. Following this is the Star Player and 'markers'. Overall I am quite happy with him, for a quick and tabletop level painting. The blood is only really on one hand because I tried it on the other and it just didn't look right. There are a little bit of remains to hint at his use of the hand.

Blood Bowl Dwarfs, More!

2010-05-28T03:10:00.000+01:00

I have been delayed in painting over the last few days, mostly due to the X-box. Having finished my degree (just awaiting results and then graduation) I have nothing to do for a month. Not being able to play much on the machine I recently purchased two games. Halo3 - ODST and Dragon Age Origins. Both great and I am really loving Dragon Age, being a huge fan of fantasy and RPGs. So yeah... However just to show I am doing stuff... I come bearing images!

All that is left now is the slayer and the star player slayer. Then on to the few extras. I have a good idea on how I want to do the "Score" and the "Turn" markers, but the "re-roll" ones I cannot think of something good except barrels and I do not own any fantasy-esk ones. Ideas?

Dwarf Blood Bowl Team

2010-05-23T21:26:00.000+01:00

So, with university practically over now I have a good few weeks before I have to move out to get some painting done. I started on the next batch of dwarf players. This is three longbeards/blockers and one blitzer. Overall I am happier with them, they turned out much better than the previous four. The only thing that might spoil them is the numbers. I decided to do them as dwarf numerals, they go into tally style from five upwards. They look OK, but might go back and repaint the pads with a more traditional numbers instead. Not sure yet.

Anyway....

Update...

2010-05-21T12:56:00.000+01:00

I haven't posted much for the better half of a week or so. Sorry about that, life took a slightly busy turn for me. Monday was my second year anniversary with my missus, we went to Newcastle for a day out. Wednesday was the day I handed in my dissertation and thus practically finished uni life!

As I have no uni stuff to do now, I am hoping to get some more painting done. I would like to get the dwarf blood bowl team finished before I leave Sheffield. I should manage that one. I am not really going to get myself into massive tasks of painting, mainly because I only have a month left in Sheffield. So, I kinda can't between the packing I have to now do and such. I do have some stuff I can finish off though.

Oh yeah. The Warrior Priest didn't sell. No bids. So I will relist him at some point soon.

Blood Bowl Dwarfs

2010-05-14T01:26:00.000+01:00

Ok, well I have done my first four dwarfs of the team and well... they're OK. I really dislike the models themselves but want to get them done out the way. So they are painted pretty much to tabletop level. I have left one shoulder pad free for the 'owner' to paint a symbol or add a transfer themselves. So yeah. Lets have it then...

I am painting!

2010-05-13T04:01:00.000+01:00

Just a brief update. I am getting some paint down, might get some WIP pictures tomorrow. I have four dwarf blood bowl players on my desk at the moment. I went with a half blue, half white scheme. So far they look OK. I don't like the minis themselves, the masks are not fun to paint. I also realised that I wasn't trying to paint these up to display level, so am just going to do them at a decent tabletop level. I think they will be fine. I am also going to be adding a few markers (turn, re-roll and score) as well.

I am also slightly disappointed by my priest. So far he has no bids, there are still four days or so left. I am unsure why, perhaps the £15 starting price was a little too much. I hope the dwarf blood bowl team goes better, though this isn't a very heartening start to an ebay sale. =(

Warrior Priest

Warrior Priest

2010-05-08T00:43:00.000+01:00

So, as I said this fellow was going up on ebay as a test to see if I can occasionally make the odd bit of extra on the side. He is now hosted on ebay. You can find his link below, if you like him please bid on him! ;)

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=300425456858

In other news, I have started another item I plan to stick on ebay. This is a metal Dwarf Blood Bowl team. So far I have done their bases and plan to get them undercoated and ready for painting tomorrow evening or the next day. So expect to see them on here soon. What is in the team is:

Blitzer x2
Blocker/Longbeard x7
Runner x2
Troll Slayer
Star Player - Grim Ironjaw

Warrior Priest - Complete

2010-05-06T04:21:00.000+01:00

So, he's finally done. Overall I am pretty damn happy with him, painting wise I like. The freehand isn't amazing but I'm still learning - it says "Empire" at the top and "Sigmar" at the bottom, I found I tend to paint letters too thickly. Something to deal with next time. The weathering might be hard to see, but has turned out quite nicely. Then I decided to do some blood on his hammer, came out well I feel. The final thing I have done tonight was his base - or the shield on it. It's a midtone purple with half an eight-pointed star on... then muddied and bloodied up. I really like the look of it.

I did have a slight problem at the end. The hands did not go together seamlessly like they originally did. I do not know why but there was a slight gap, I am not happy about this as I feel it spoils him a bit. I don't want a buyer to get him and see these and get upset. :( However, I cannot think of a way of fixing it without GSing over the gaps. So, it will be left. I have tried to cover them as best I can. *shrug*

Anyway, before the pictures go up, he will be going on ebay later this week (I'm going to post a link to it when he's up), so feel free to bid on him! This is mainly a small project to see if I am good enough to occasionally earn a little bit of money on the side. It be nice!

Now... photos.

Salamander Apothecary - Complete

2010-04-30T04:57:00.001+01:00

OK, well he's done. Overall I am really liking him. I happy with most of the painting, especially the chapter icon. Its one of my better pieces of freehand so far. I did however HATE painting his base, and so I am not fully happy with how it looks. My first attempt at lava bases and its OK, but I think I should have used another rock of something to give it something to flow around. But that wasn't the main problem. That was indeed Vallejo paints. Or more specifically the Game Colour range of reds. There are [u]terrible[/u]! The "Red Gore" dried PINK! The "Blood Red" is about two tones higher than it should be and is really bright. So, I struggled. Overall I am not that happy with the base, its OK but not good. Luckily he's only pinned on, so I can try again another time.

Salamander Apothecary

2010-04-29T03:16:00.000+01:00

OK. Time to show you what I've been doing. I decided that for once I need to put my money where my mouth is, and have a crack at one of the monthly painting contests Librarium-Online runs. The current theme, for those who don't know, is MEDIC! With this in mind, and recently having come across a great looking mini and piece of old Salamander fluff I dived in. The mini itself has little conversion work done to it - the main thing being I gave him a straight aiming right arm (why does GW not produce these? Its annoying... ), the rest is just basics.

Overall I am really happy with the way he looks. He has lost some of the more subtle shades and highlights in transference to a photo, but it happens. The only thing I am really not happy with is the "glass" vials. I just couldn't get it right, something I need to work on. My favourite part is the red. Its a really nice, deep tone. I love it!

And now... pictures!

Coming Soon....

2010-04-28T01:46:00.000+01:00

A 40k n00b - Wound Allocation... eh?

2010-04-27T19:15:00.001+01:00

Now, please forgive but I am not much of a gamer. In general I have a decent grasp of the rules, but some stuff slips through my fingers. Wound Allocation is such one rule. I was hoping you kind folk of the interwebs could enlighten my mind. And to help me, lets use an example...

I have a ten man generic space marine tactical squad. It includes one sergeant with a power weapon, one marine with a flamer, another with a missile launcher and the rest are all armed with boltguns.

The unit suffers 12 wounds.

How would you allocate these?

Does everyone have to take one wound each, then the two remaining placed one any you choose? Or can you pile them all onto a couple of guys? What is the advantage of arming them all different ways? Is it the owning player that allocates wounds, or does your opponent have a say in who he'd like to attack? Is it done the same in combat as well as view shooting?

Thanks guys!

Empire Warrior Priest - Part II

2010-04-21T01:14:00.000+01:00

So. Between dissertation work (ONE MONTH LEFT!!) and other stuff, I have managed to get a small amount of painting done. Yesterday I picked the Warrior Priest up once more and I worked on his armour. I think it looked good. It was multiple washes which was then layered over with lots of really thin layers of metallics. It gave it a really good aged look to it. I liked it. Then, today I decided to give it another look. I wanted to give the impression of dents and cracks in the armour - that is what those black lines are. Or were suppose to be. I might have to repaint the armour, as I think they spoil it. :S

The other thing I noticed is that I really need to get better at blending. I just can't get it quite right a lot of the time. My layers are too far apart to blend well. So that is something else I really need to work on, especially if I want to get better.

Oh yeah, the leather on him is just basecoated and washed. Plenty more work to do on them.

Thoughts>

Review - Salamander

2010-04-09T01:27:00.000+01:00

This is a first book in the series labelled as "The Tome of Fire" written by Black Library author Nick Kyme (see his blog here). As you might have gathered the novel follows the Salamander space marine chapter. Or to be more specific it follows the 3rd Company of the Salamander's chapter. There are a number of characters the novel follows, these being two sergeants of tactical squads - who bear a not so friendly rivalry - a librarian attached to the company, and the company's commander(s), along with other members of the chapter and company..

It begins with the death of the previous company's captain at the hands of an insidious, and mysterious traitor marines, the Dragon Warriors. The company is then thrown into turmoil, with the selection of a new captain and are given a mission of utmost importance. I will keep the spoilers to a minimum here, so I will not go into the rest of the story. You'll have to read the novel, yourselves to find out what happens.

I will admit to being a bit biased towards Nick Kyme, I am an avid reader of his blog (though, he doesn't post as often) and love his previous novels. That aside I thoroughly believe he has written a great novel. The Salamanders are an unusual marine chapter, in their care for humanity, and this is something I think Nick got across in most of the main characters. You truly feel at times that they genuinely care. I found the momentum and the action to be well paced, especially as the action at times was split over a number of different characters - sometimes all in the same conflict. Other novels I have read from Black Library have struggled sometimes, the characters seeming forced and quite cookie cutter. Not so with the Salamander's Nick has brought to life. Each one has their own curious personalities, and in some agendas. All of which work alongside of each other to produce some well written characters. I also enjoyed Nick's work on bringing out more detailed information on the inner workings of the Salamanders, their homeworld Nocturne and the 'Promethean Cult' they hold close.

I myself am eagerly awaiting the next book in the series.

Empire Warrior Priest - Part I

2010-04-03T21:39:00.000+01:00

A new mini has begun! I have had this warrior priest sat in a box for a long time, and I wanted to paint a mini to be sold on ebay. This guy fits the bill. I started off with some fixing of the hands, I have pinned them and green stuffed the join. The shield is made from plasticard, carved to look like a shield - I think I'll try freehanding something chaotic on it.

The priest himself, I am painting his main robes red along with the generic priest of Sigmar look. The face is finished, and I am relatively happy with the look of his face. However, I found his left eye a pain to paint and thus is looks odd. I also went for the 'stubbled' look on the head/crown. I am not fully happy with the stubble on the head, it bugs me it doesn't look that good.

The other parts of the mini are just blocked in. The metal is basecoated and washed with Badab Black. The red is just basecoated; mechrite red and dark flesh. This is all I have done so far.

I am wondering what colour to do the cloak. I have considered red, but I didn't want to do too much red. And I most likely going to attempt some freehand on the back of it, perhaps a large hammer but I am unsure.

Front View

Rear View

Close up on the face

The Base

Dwarf Warriors - Complete

2010-03-18T00:10:00.000Z

Right. I finally got their bases completed. They're not amazing, unfortunately the milliput was a little too sticky and so stuck to the stamp in place, so some of the bases have little tears in them. :( But they're not so noticeable. As usual my camera has washed away the blue tone of the unit. I really don't know why, but it does look a bit closer this time. But, they're done:

And, an extra treat... this is my "completed model" shelf I have with me at uni. I have more at home, but not many pictures of them.

Dwarf Warriors - Almost there!

2010-03-12T23:03:00.000Z

Right then. Update time!

The unit is finished, except the bases. I have fifteen of those to stamp out, and should hopefully be finished sometime next week. But for the moment, here are some pictures of the front rank with shields.

Command group - Musician and Veteran

Detail of Veteran's axe

Warriors

Unit Standard Bearer

So, what do you think?

Also, I believe the template for my blog is playing up - the background image has gone. I am sorry about that, I'm going to leave it until the weekend and then if needs be find a new one. Shame, I really liked that template. =( Oh well.

What do you think?

Dwarf Warriors, WIP redux

2010-03-10T00:36:00.000Z

So, midterms are now done and dusted, and I have been given some time to get a little bit of painting done. They were pretty much done last week to be fair, I just added some more to them. Almost finished now, just to finish off the banner, shields and base them. I'm quite happy.

The banner. Now, before anyone suggests it, I won't be doing NMM on the axes. Mainly because I don't like the style and I am not happy with my blending skills as of yet. So I'd rather practice on something I can strip easily or not care if I mess it up etc. I am quite happy with the design of the banner. The axe heads are not that good - different sizes and I just couldn't get them to look right. Ah well. I still have the axe shafts to finish, going to attempt another go at wood grain. Oh and the runes at the bottom are for the clan and it is: Silveraxe Clan. :)

Oh and my unit's champion is the one in the first photo on the right hand side. I am not happy on him. He doesn't stand out that well - I changed his weapon (hard to see from here) and his helmet is entirely bronze. I am not that big a fan on it at the moment. I need a better way of making his hand out without using the horns or wings.

Musician and Veteran

Rank and file

Standard Bearer

Tacticus Hobbicus

2010-03-03T00:58:00.000Z

This is going to be a new series I will be writing. I am by no means the best blogger; painter, hobbyist out there but I have relatively decent experience. This series will be my thoughts on the hobby side of the miniature gaming pastime, from blogging all the way to painting. I will be posting this series at Libararium-Online.com, as well as in my blog there. As well as on the Battlereporter forum, The Trading Post blog, and my own personal blog.

I do not know how often I will do these, but will try to keep them semi-regular. Any tips or comments are welcome, feel free to PM or email me on the usual channels.

Anyway, moving on to the first part of the series. To jump right in, I thought I’d discuss blogging. Something that has become a big thing for hobbyists on the net now, whether it is on forums or other sites.

Why blog?

Blogs are a useful tool for the hobbyist of the modern era. They are a place where one can show off their work and seek advice, but are also great for keeping track of tasks, paint jobs, tutorials and other such things we hobby fellows do. Blogs are great place to keep your projects in order; you might not even use it as somewhere to parade your work, but rather as just somewhere to store it. You don’t have to be an amazing modeller; they don’t even have to be about painting and modelling. But it is generally important to have some idea of what you want your blog to be about, it helps draw people who are interested in that to it. That said, a general blog works just as fine – my very own Grumpy Stunty is quite general of my own gaming experiences.

Where to blog?

One question for new hobbyists who come to face when considering a blog, is where should they set up their blog? There is a myriad of locations to start, from a forum your regular visit (such as Libararium-Online, Dakka Dakka, Warseer etc) – this could be done in their painting sections, as often forums now have a specific area for painting blogs (or plogs), or in a specific blogging section of the forum. An alternative is to make one on a dedicated blog site such as blogger or wordpress. These are the main methods used, but there are other options out there.

The Blog

(N.B. Some of these will apply only to blogger/wordpress)

When you set up a blog, there are a number of things to remember. . One of them is the look. It doesn’t sound important; I mean who cares as long as you like it, right? And that is a fair point really, it is YOUR blog. However, if you want people to view it, then it needs to be user friendly. Having lots of add-ons that distract from the content might put people off. The same applies to the template you use. Try to consider and think of a good looking one, but try to avoid ones with added images in the background – they make it look cluttered. There are loads of templates out there, find the one that suits your blog. And remember, there is nothing wrong with testing them out.

If you are doing it on a forum, consider how long you might use such a blog, how popular it could get and how to make it easy to navigate. Take my own blog as an example. It is nearly three years old, and has nearly nine hundred and fifty posts in it. That is a lot. And so as you can imagine there is a lot of stuff in there, so to make it user friendly I added a contents page (click link to see it). This hold links to the individual posts of my completed projects. This makes it easier for people looking for something on the blog to find it or to just navigate around such a large blog. It is regularly updated with each project, for ease of viewing. Simple touches like this will make your blog a bit more rememberable and make people want to check it for new updates.

Another thing to remember is colours. It’s understandable that you’d like to make your blog stand out among the crowd, and the easiest way to do so - it would seem – is to add colour. This can be fine, but be wary when using colour, font types and styles; as too much can make it look bad. It is important that you make your blog your own, so experiment, but do remember to keep a thought on “How readable is it?”

Comments

Everyone loves to be told that their painting/posts are a work of genius. A pure work of art. But that never happens. Sometimes there are no comments. Not one. This can be very disheartening, especially to new bloggers. There are ways of getting people to look at your blog, and hopefully comment, and the simplest way is to comment on other people’s posts. I don’t mean go spam other blogs and telling them to go look at yours, and this is likely to annoy people. Instead, seek to add constructive posts, or keep a link to your blog in your sig/profile. Just make it accessible.

Do not worry if you don’t get comments. Remember, this blog is for you. I regularly don’t get a lot of comments on blogs, so I just look at it like this – “it’s nice to get comments, but meh” and continue to post when I please. It you try and make your posts provocative or outlandish to get attention, and then perhaps blogging isn’t for you.

Once final point I would like to make about commenting is, if you get a comment – reply! It is quite important this. It shows you have interest and interact with others will increase the chances they’ll return and comment again.

Posting

This is going to be brief. I just wanted to discuss posting on your blog. To get interest you need to have a good topic, but just as importantly you need to write well. Now, I’m not saying that you need a degree in English Language but watching your grammar and spelling is quite important. I personally have found it off putting when people start to hugely misspell or use “text speak” during a post. It is not difficult to write out full words or run your post through word – or download add-ons for your browser (I have a dictionary for my firefox, along with a spell-checker). Also consider the manner, of which you are writing, make it easy on the eye. Blocks of text is not appealing and people are just as likely, if not more so, to not read it than they are to spend the time reading. Simple uses of paragraphs make a world of difference. Language is also an issue to be aware of. Most forums will have a swear filter on them, designed to filter out swear words – blogs do not have this. You can swear all you want, but bear in mind many find it a disgusting habit; so consider whether you will swear on your blog. Ideally I would suggest not doing it at all.

Another thing to bear in mind is not to feel pressured into posting lots just because there are others out there who do it every day. Every blogger has their own pace, once you find yours stick to it. It is better to post only once or twice a week with some good, solid interesting posts than to do multiple lesser posts. It might be useful to have some saved – either on your hard drive or as a draft post – so that you won’t be too rushed to go and can post at your own speed.

Take time with the images you post. There isn’t much point in putting up something blurry, as you’ll be told it is blurry. There are plenty of tutorials and guides out there on how to take decent photos.

Below are some links you might find useful

http://corbaniaprime.blogspot.com/2009/05/thoughts-about-blogging.html

http://fromthewarp.blogspot.com/2010/01/10-ways-to-improve-your-blog.html

http://fromthewarp.blogspot.com/2010/01/analytical-look-at-ftw.html

*******************

Dwarf Warriors, WIP

2010-02-27T02:02:00.001Z

Right then. Finally got the second batch of five complete. Again, no base but they'll be done at the end. So here they are:

I am not fully happy with parts of them. For example, you can just about see my attempt at wood grain. I need to practice this more, it came out OK in places but I had trouble with getting it to look like dark wood. I did however do better at the runes on the shields. Still cannot get them looking symmetrical or the same size, but they look decent.

Next up, after these is the front rank and command. Still not decided what to do for their banner, but I have a few ideas.

Dwarf warriors.

I have done a small amount of converting to them. One thing you'll notice, when I get a picture of them, is the lack of horns and wings. Only a couple of my minis will have these added to the helmets. For the most part, I dislike them. I just really don't like them on the dwarf helmets, and want to come up with a better idea of changing them. Its something I want to do with my army. I have been ~~playing~~ collecting dwarfs for a long time and have recently realised that none of the army incarnations have actually been MY dwarfs. They've always been in the GW scheme or used a typical dwarf army straight out the box.

So, with this army I have a plan. I want to make it mine. Using what skills I have as a painter/modeller I want to make this dwarf army HUGE and MINE. So small conversions, and larger ones. I am not building it to game with (though, I will be doing so) but rather as a life long project that is Kuffy flavoured (with a hint of outsiders). Its a very long term plan and will be built alongside my greenskins, along with fluff and all other stuff. I want this army to hold a very personal connection for me.

As to your point about the longbeards, I still have a unit of the beautiful metal ones to repaint. But I will also be seeking a new method of making them stand out from warriors. I don't know just yet, so I'm not going to dwell on them until I feel I am ready to tackle them.

Another point, I never explained the runes from my army. The runes stand for "Ungorwutraz Karag" or "The Delving Spear Mountain". I have some skeletal outlines of fluff, but haven't really planned much further than that yet.

Hobby Experience

2010-02-18T02:49:00.002Z

In other news, I find myself liking the idea of Warmachine more and more. I currently posses the MKI rules for both Warmachine and Hordes, and have always favoured Hordes (due to the stronger fantasy style link) but I don't possess any army or have attempted to make one. In fact I own a single model, a Trollblood yeti creature (Frost Troll?) which I attempted to paint for a contest but just never liked it when I put brush to metal.

One reason why I put the rules aside is that, I don't really game and I found the rules confusing. I'd need to watch a game and probably have someone run me through the rules to properly understand. However, I am now beginning to consider my hobby more. I am, at heart, a GW fan boy. I own all the Fantasy army and rule books from the 4th ed onwards (except 4th/5th ed Lizardmen and Chaos Dwarfs) as well as most of the Fantasy based background books and a lot of the novels. The same goes for 40k, all codices since 3rd ed. I also own various supplements and game add-ons (Planetary Empires and Apocalypse for example) and use a lot of their products (spray, paint etc).

So, my hobby experience has firmly been embedded in the GW world. I have only recently begun to look outside their main two "headliners", so to speak. I have played Mordheim a little bit, and have a great love of Blood Bowl (though, I am only currently playing it on FUMBBL.com). These games are a lot of fun, don't cost so much and allow for more personalisation. However, what do they all have in common? GW no longer supports them, in fact they have seemingly recently shafted the BB community with the way they have handled the new rules set. And yet, they all have a large cult following. BB is perhaps the most supported by the players, with lots of tournaments going on and a very strong community. Mordheim also has this, albeit to a lesser extent.

I find these other games to be a lot of fun. The rules are generally well done, with a few problems here or there. I just wish GW would give them some love, rather than abandoning them in favour of 40K and Fantasy, and to a lesser extent Lord of the Rings. A single updated FAQ or something each year would be great. That said. I have seem some great fan based websites and designs for Mordheim in particular. I have also considered picking up LOTR. I will admit that when GW announced they were making a LOTR system and it grappled its way into the third slot for the 'Headliners" I was a bit upset and annoyed. Hoping it would die and swearing I'd never play it. This was, and is, a naive and stupid view. I still haven't played it but I have had a look at the rule set and I was impressed. It is simple, quick and well written. I think it sits sort of between Fantasy and 40k in that its simple, quick and easy to play - like 40k - but also involves some complicated rules to make it a bit more challenging - like Fantasy. To this end, I have considered picking it up as another game. Or just some stuff to paint.

Back to my first point about Warmachine. I like the minis and the rules, from what most say, are easy to understand and play quite smoothly. So, I am considering picking this up. Khador appeals to me. It will also be something extra to expand my gaming experience and perhaps stop me viewing GW quite so often through my rose-tinted glasses. We shall see.

Oh yeah. [SHAMELESS PLUG] Go check out the Fantasy Hub of http://the-tradingpost.blogspot.com/ and tell others to join. The more the merrier! Any ideas, blogs to add or anything please email me on thetradingpostblog[at]googlemail.com

Dwarf Warriors WIP.

2010-02-18T01:49:00.001Z

Right then. I finally got some painting done, uni has been keeping me busy, and I have five whole warriors to show for it. I am pretty happy with them, however I have noticed that my bronze is not consistent across the board. I need to sort that out. I need to keep practising on my freehand. Its OK at the moment, but still quite sloppy really. Anyway, three pictures of five dwarf warriors, sans bases.

___________________________

Tutorial - Making flagstone bases using green stuff stamps

2010-02-04T21:44:00.000Z

This tutorial is for the making of flagstone style bases by using a green stuff stamp. This is a simple, but can be a slightly lengthy method of doing this. However, once the stamp(s) are made the ability to make bases is quite swift. You just follow the last two or three steps.

Stage 1

The first stage is to mix up enough green stuff to cover a base. You make to make sure it is the right height and covers the base well. And leave to cure for about 10-20 minutes

Stage 2
This stage we mark on the design you want. At this point you don't want to drag the green stuff too much, it is possible that you will cause it to stretch and will warp your design. Once you are happy leave it to dry over night.

Stage 3
This is where the etching begins. Use a tool (I used a couple of my sculpting tools) to deepen the markings you made previously. They don't actually have to be that deep, just enough that the next stage will be effective.

Stage 4
Once you have etched in your design to the base, you then need to use something to make sure the mold will come free with minimal fuss. I used the below, Vaseline. Spread it over your base, making sure you get it into the gaps you have made.

Stage 5
Now, put another ball of green stuff onto your newly greased base. Push down to make sure it goes into the gaps, which is the important part. Push this down firmly, and leave to dry for about 10-15 minutes. I found it handy to make sure there is an edge on the stamp, it makes it easier to line it up in the following sections.

Once you remove the stamp, this is what you should have (but with your own design). Then leave to dry over night.

Stage 6
This stage is where once you've made the stamp you can just repeat to make multiple bases. I used milliput myself, but you can used green stuff just as well. Make a small amount of your material up and apply it to the base, much like the first step.

Stage 7
Take your stamp and push into the milliput firmly (first picture). Leave this for about 30 seconds or so, then carefully remove. Be careful not to drag or pull the stamp too much, this might cause the gaps it leaves to warp. (second picture) Then leave to dry over night. Once dry it will be available to paint.

In the end the bases should turn out something like this:

Runesmith - nearly complete

2010-02-03T03:16:00.000Z

So, more on the runesmith. The mini itself is complete, and I am quite happy with him overall. The runes in the book I do feel are a bit too big, but I am not that good at freehand just yet, so it'll have to do. Otherwise I am pretty happy with him, the shield worked out well enough again. Though I am aware that I haven't explained the runes meanings. So, they stand for = Ungorwutraz Karag [Khazalid], or The Delving Spear Mountain. Here are the pictures of him, the base is still being done. I am writing my own tutorial for the stamping method I use for them.

Irregular Magazine - Review

2010-02-01T03:56:00.000Z

The magazine's layout is very well done. The articles all have a consistent and well balanced layout, with the good use of images and text. I found the pure black and white colours of text and page a bit boring but it works well enough, and perhaps other colours would distract from the content. The images work well; all of them fit the text on the page and are formatted to be an accompaniment to the text. Something they do very well.

The tutorials and painting articles are quite simple to follow and understand, along with good pictures for each step in the guides. They make good reads and I believe most with a decent understanding of highlighting and shading can follow them to a decent degree. There are a couple that are for the more advanced hobbyist - such as the casting article. In the future I would like to see a better range of articles, going from some quite basic or beginner articles all the way to advanced/expert ones. In addition to these articles there are some good gaming articles, a lot dealing with RPGs, something that seems to be a trend with the previous issues also. Personally, I’d quite like to see more varied gaming articles, incorporating other gaming systems.

Overall, the magazine itself is pretty damn good. I enjoy reading it and think its great to see a hobby heavy webzine being produced and look forward to more issues in the future.

Dwarf Runesmith

2010-01-28T02:24:00.001Z

So. I got some painting done over the last few days, and this is what I have to show. I have enjoyed painting him so far, though as usual the turquoise looks very green. But looks good in person, I don't know why my camera does this. Anyway, here...

Also, I now have fifty followers! Wow. Thanks guys, appreciate the viewing. Also, please be sure to check out my other blog, The Trading Post it is a Warhammer Fantasy blog hub. I hope you join, or point more fantasy bloggers towards it.

Thane complete

2010-01-16T18:52:00.000Z

There wasn't much to do to him, just some slight touch ups and his base. So, this is him:

Dwarf Thane

2010-01-15T03:37:00.000Z

So, it has been mighty quiet on here. Sorry about that. I have been doing other gaming stuff, namely a lot of Heroes of Might and Magic III, Civilization 4 and now Darksiders. I have been working on this guy over the last few days:

I have spotted some things to tidy up since these photos and of course he needs his base. However, overall I am quite happy with him. He isn't my best model to date, I think I need to try and squeeze some painting in most days of the week, but I still like him.

The Grumpy Stunty

Necromunda Gang

Big Mek Conversion

Da Green Tide Takes to Da Skyz!

Blowing the dust off...

BA Librarian Update

Return to painting...

Dwarf army the collection

Moving time...

[40k] Space Marine Librarian - 2

[40k] Space Marine Librarian

Return from the Meet

Moving on....

[FANTASY] A Dwarfs Tale: Longbeards Completed

[Musing] Painting!

[FANTASY] A Dwarfs Tale: Longbeard Progress

[Fantasy] A Dwarfs Tale - Army Standard Bearer

[Fantasy] A Dwarfs Tale - Stone Thrower III

[Fantasy] A Dwarfs Tale - Stone Thrower II

[FANTASY] A Dwarfs Tale - War Machines Part II

[FANTASY] A Dwarfs Tale - War Machines

[MORDHEIM] Possessed and Warband Completion

[MORDHEIM] Possessed Colours.... help.

[MORDHEIM] Magister

[Mordheim] Possessed Warband

"Dice is Our Vice"

Is Variety the Spice of Life, or do Too Many Cooks Spoil the Broth?

A Dwarfs Tale: From King to Clansman - Great Weapon Warriors

A Dwarfs Tale: From King to Clansman - A painting guide

Working...

A Dwarfs Tale: From King to Clansman - Warriors with GWs

A Dwarfs Tale: From King to Clansman - Unit Filler

A Dwarfs Tale: From King to Clansman Part VI. - Thunderers Complete

A Dwarfs Tale: From King to Clansman - Thunderers finished

A Dwarfs Tale: From King to Clansman - Thunderers

Mannfred Von Carstein - Complete

A Dwarfs Tale: From King to Clansman. Part V - The List

Moving the hobby along

Goals for 2011

Mannfred Von Carstein; Pt III

Review - Firedrake by Nick Kyme

Rethinking Orks

Mannfred Von Carstein; Pt II

Mannfred Von Carstein; Pt I

*ahem*

LOTR: Strategy Battle Game - Review

Look what arrived yesterday!

A Dwarfs Tale: From King to Clansman. Part IV - Cannon

Dwarf Cannon

Homemade - Dwarf Upgrade: The Book of Grudges

My thoughts on LOTR

A Dwarfs Tale: From King to Clansman. Part III - Warriors

Where does it go...?

A Dwarfs Tale: From King to Clansman. Part II - The Basics

PART TWO

Elf. Just an elf.

Bugman from Bugman's Bar

Bugman from Bugman's Bar

FINALLY!!

A Dwarfs Tale: From King to Clansman. Part I - The Beginning

Podcast review - Garagehammer, episode 8

A quick update

A post? YES! A POST!

Loot!

Auction Over

Blood Bowl Auction

Modelling Mayhem

Blood Bowl Dwarfs, Complete!

Blood Bowl Dwarfs, the full team

Update for the Trading Post

Dwarf Blood Bowl Team - Star Player Grim Ironjaw

Dwarf Blood Bowl Team - slayer

Blood Bowl Dwarfs, More!

Dwarf Blood Bowl Team

Update...

Blood Bowl Dwarfs

I am painting!

Warrior Priest

Warrior Priest - Complete

Salamander Apothecary - Complete

ahem