The Ladykillers – Part 8

I know I claimed that the next model I was going to finish painting for the Eschers would be a champion with a chem thrower but working on the Juve I showed in the previous post fired my enthusiasm in a slightly different direction and I ended up painting up a second Juve instead. This one is based on one of the barbarians from the Godsworn Hunt set – her expression of overenthusiastic determination is just perfect for a new recruit desperate to prove herself to her gangmates.

Got something slightly different to work on next but I will get back to that champion before the end of the month – promise!

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The Ladykillers – Part 7

Time to add another Escher to the gang, this time a converted Juve built from a model released a number of years ago by Mad Puppet Miniatures. Some time ago I bought a whole load of models from them but my painting skills at the time were less than impressive and those that I did manage to finish have mostly been gathering dust ever since. This scavenger had been sitting around part-painted for several years and I realised I might never get her finished without doing something to stoke the fires of enthusiasm. My solution was to make a few tweaks and incorporate her into the Escher gang instead. For those unfamiliar with the original model main changes I made were to replace her original weapon, a crude club, with a suitable laspistol and give her a knife strapped to her back.

There’s not a big height difference between her and the other girls, although it’s there, but her ragged clothes and armour, and rounder, younger face, should be more than enough to sell the idea that she’s a Juve.

Getting her finished has also encouraged me to dig out my other, long neglected, Mad Puppet models. They really are gorgeous miniatures so I’d like to get to work on them soon – although not straight away as I’ve got plenty of other things to work on first, starting with more Escher gangers. Next in line I’m going to take a stab at one of the gang’s champions, a sinister looking lady with a chem-thrower. All being well she should be ready to reveal soon.

Give It Your Best Shot

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about adding a sniper to my Imperial Guard warband. Thematically I think it ties in nicely with them, particularly if I decide to try them out in Kill Team. Admittedly there’s something about the idea of snipers that makes me slightly squeamish; the thought of someone lying in wait far from the intended victim, turning the act of killing into a clinical process of mathematics, wind speeds and angles. Plus there’s the fact that by its very nature it’s unexpected. One second you are buying bread, the next you’re brown bread and there’s not a whole lot you can do about it. If you’re planning to murder me at least have the courtesy to do it to my face!

Anyway, having bared my soul regarding my slight fear of snipers, I still thought that one would be a fine addition to my guard. After all being a sniper is one of those things that an unaugmented human can be perfectly good at. Take a modern military sniper and transpose them to the 41st millennium and they’ll still be at the top of their game. The toughest, most ruthless soldier in any other part of the military however would probably be just about qualified to do a space marine’s laundry. Don’t get me wrong the guard aren’t useless it’s simply that against the horrors of the far future you need to be more than just handy in a fight against other humans (that’s why the Emperor made space marines in the first place). After all, the species which have survived for ten millennia against the Imperial war machine aren’t to be trifled with – an Ork wearing only its y-fronts still beats most humans hands down and even a grot would give you a nasty bite.

Anyway, hardly had I come to the conclusion that I needed a sniper in my life than I received a bitz drop from the inimitable blogger and hobbyist IRO. What did I find lurking in amongst it but this sharpshooting lady from Victoria miniatures.

I’ve often looked at the Victoria Miniatures range in the past but never got around to getting anything, so a big thanks is owed again to IRO for the extremely timely gift. Indeed he actually painted a version of her himself recently so if you just can’t get enough of admiring this miniature you can check out his version here.

War Eternal – Part 2

Just a quick post today, but I just assembled this angry young man and couldn’t resist taking the chance to show him off.

Inspired by my recent forays into the realm of Khorne I found myself idly perusing the range of followers available to the Blood God’s devotees and stumbled upon the Exalted Deathbringer. The followers of Khorne are blessed with a number of heroes and champions, all themed around the concept of chopping people up – whether that’s praying whilst chopping people up, masterfully chopping people up, being exulted for chopping people up or merely aspiring to chop people up. We even have the Skullgrinder, who isn’t the subject of today’s post, but still merits a mention for having one of the silliest weapon choices outside of a gobbo. Back in the early days of Age Of Sigmar GW’s designers must have realised that the restrictions placed upon them by the Old World were lifted and they could do whatever they liked. Unfortunately this went to their heads somewhat and the result was a man who hits people with an anvil.

Anyway, today we’ll be looking at an Exalted Deathbringer. For those who still struggle to navigate the soup-like naming conventions of the Khornate range, a gory morass of death, blood and skulls in various arrangements like a teenage Thrash Metal band, the Exalted Deathbringer is essentially an old-fashioned champion of Khorne who does pretty much exactly what it says on the tin; he brings death to people and the god of bloodshed has exalted him for it.

It’s worth noting as well that the Exalted Deathbringer has quite the assortment of models to represent them, from the slightly odd looking Impaling Spear version to the impressively imposing Ruinous Axe version. This time, however, we’re looking at the Bloodbite Axe version. Here’s the studio model that first inspired me.

As I looked at him I found myself thinking, somewhat arrogantly, “I could make that” – or at the very least I could make a decent facsimile – out of plastic bits. Truth be told the end result turned out looking rather different to the official piece, but I think it still does a nice job of capturing the look of a hardened, and heavily armoured, barbarian on the lookout for, to quote the official blurb, “worthy foes to butcher”.

Not sure when I’ll find the time to paint him but I’m feeling very inspired about all things Khornate at the moment so I’m sure he’ll find his moment sooner or later.

War Eternal – Part 1

I’ve been toying with the idea of making some Age of Sigmar warbands for a while now but until recently I’ve not really done anything about it. That changes now however. The push came when Alex of Leadballoony published his plans for working on AoS Skirmish and the idea took root in my brain. Alex, accompanied by fellow blogger Ross of Classic Chaos Daemons, set out a series of guidelines for the project and invited anyone else who fancied it to join in. Naturally this seemed like the perfect opportunity to get one of my own warbands up and running so I nailed my colours to the metaphorical mast and sallied forth.

Let’s start by taking a look at those guidelines:

Build & paint 100ish ‘renown’ points in Feb (to include our Generals), and 25ish renown per month thereafter, up to 250 pts.

This seems a sensible and manageable way to do things so I’ll be trying to stick to it to. Conveniently my general also comes to exactly 100 renown so getting him painted this month will tick this box nicely.

The warband must be from a faction we don’t currently collect. Ross and I chose the faction for each other…

As I don’t really have anything for AoS, beyond some unpainted Nighthaunt and perhaps the odd squig, the world is my oyster here. I did consider inviting suggestions from my readers or starting a poll but in the end my deep and abiding rage combined with my need to harvest people’s heads to manufacture an uncomfortable seating solution won out and I pledged my soul to Khorne.

Set in a common realm, (realm tbd), based & modelled accordingly

Naturally this sounds like a fine idea for a group project but as I’m not part of the core team on this I can follow my own path. Of course I may yet end up being inspired by them.

Push the modelling & painting – AoS28 style, crazy conversions, grim-dark, etc.

Well naturally. Is there any other way?

Lowest cost possible – beg/borrow/steal, freebees, scratch build, re-use, etc.

I really like this idea it adds an extra layer of creative challenge to the project and saves money into the bargain. When I first got into this hobby I couldn’t afford to buy many miniatures so finding ways to make models cheaply was the name of the game. Actual miniatures may have been out with my budget but other people’s left over bits were much more affordable, bulked out by donations from friends. It was this as much as anything else that lead me to take up converting and kitbashing so by following this rule I feel like I’ll be going back to my roots, albeit with a far more extensive bits box to draw upon. My goal is to use only models I already own for this warband and, as much as possible, use bits that I gathered for other projects which then failed to reach fruition. My general meanwhile will be based on a model given away free on the cover of White Dwarf. We’ll take a look at him shortly.

Narrative rather than competitive warbands – named characters, backstories, etc.

Frankly I wouldn’t know where to begin guessing what’s competitive and what isn’t so there’s no danger of that with me (unless, of course, it happens by pure chance!). I’m interested in cool looking models and an engaging narrative, and a warband of this type is a golden opportunity really pursue that.

Anyway, that wall of text has been more than enough for anyone to endure so let’s take a look at the as yet unnamed leader of my warband, a priest of the bloodthirsty god Khorne.

Until I assembled him I didn’t realise what a big lad he is, he certainly towers over this Blood Warrior (who may end up incorporated into the warband himself).

Indeed, for those who’re curious, here he is next to those perennials of the size-comparison photograph; an Imperial Guardsman and a Primaris Space Marine.

As you can see I stuck fairly closely to the original design of the Slaughter Priest model just swapping out the head for what may (or may not!) be a masked visage befitting such a fearsome character. I did consider tweaking the model a little more but it’s one of my favourite Khornate miniature’s in the range and I didn’t want to do anything that would take away from that. As for his missing head it ended up on this Bloodgor. The Blades of Khorne book doesn’t actually contain Bloodgor, nor are there any in GW’s current range, but I wasn’t about to compound their mistakes by failing to include at least one of my own. Indeed rather than stick religiously to one army book I’ve decided to incorporate a mixture of daemons, beasts and mortals of all kinds, united in their dedication to the blood god.

Indeed, I was so excited about making Bloodgor after finishing the first one that I abandoned my original plans and immediately made a second one.

Not all of the warband is built yet but I have been having a lot of fun assembling the first few recruits. These ragged blood reavers have been looking for a home since the first edition of AoS was released so it’s high time I did something with them.

There’s also a fairly high chance this chap will sneak into the ranks as I’ve been keen to get him painted since I got my paws on him.

Obviously now I just need to bash on with getting the Slaughter Priest painted up, as well as starting to explore his backstory and discovering how he came to be leading a ragtag band out of the Chaos wastes. Watch this space, and expect to see the priest at least finished by the end of the month.

 

The Ladykillers – Part 6

I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve really not given House Escher the attention they deserve over the last year or so. A few gangers have made their way off the painting desk in dribs and drabs, but as yet the house can’t command the kind of strength available to the likes of the Goliaths or Genestealer Cults. Here’s a quick reminder of how the gang looks so far.

This however is a fine time to do something about that. Kicked off last year by Alex of Leadballoony, Fembruary aims to encourage hobbyists to get a few female miniatures painted, whether that in order to add a little diversity to a male-dominated collection or to help enthuse and encourage those who are battling to paint up a primarily female force such as Sisters of Battle or who keep intending to get Alarielle ready for the table but never quite get around to it. For me I intend it to be the goad I use to get a number of unpainted ladies finished including – but not limited to – filling out the ranks of the Escher gang I’ve been working on for my partner. I’ll be spreading my attention around the gang, hopefully even finding time to work on some as yet unassembled models, but my main focus will be on a group I built way back when the Necromunda box set was first released in late 2017. These include some of my favourite models I’ve assembled for the gang and so it’s high time they enjoyed some attention.

Setting the ball rolling we have a couple more gangers starting with the ruthless “Ultra” Violet.

Alongside her we have “Hydra” Sanura who I built quite some time ago, before Forge World had released their weapon upgrades packs. In those days life was hard and a ganger who wanted a hand flamer had to kitbash their own. Juves nowadays don’t know how good they have it I tell you!

My plan is to crack on with as many of the other gang members as possible this month, although before I do that there’s a very angry man I need to finish building.

It’s A Dog’s Life

Remember when there didn’t seem to be any dogs in GW’s universes? Just a few months ago one struggled to summon a faithful hound to add to a collection of miniatures roaming the 41st Millennium, the shadowy Underhive or the wild expanses of the Mortal Realms. Nowadays however you’re tripping over them.

My first thought was to compare the size of the new Godsworn Hunt dog with Macula, the frankly enormous hound which accompanies Slate Merdena through the Necromundan wastelands. In the beginning my intention was purely to take a look at them side by side for my own interest, but after a conversation with Faust of Double-Down Dice it occurred to me that other people might be interested as well. I’m afraid there’s nothing new or particularly unusual on show here but if you happen to have a burning desire to know the relative sizes of some of GW’s canines then hopefully this post will help to satisfy your obscure interest!

I would add that my dog collection is by no means exhaustive, there’s nothing at from Lord of the Rings here, the mighty Fenrisian Wolves (for a long time the poster boys of man’s best friend in the dark millennium) are notably absent (because I think they’re terrible models!) and there isn’t even a hint of a goblin wolf-rider. I did however get quite carried away and rather than simply grabbing Macula from the “to paint” shelf, snapping a couple of shots and having done with it, I ended up rummaging around for every dog or dog-like beast I could think of.

Having bought the Godsworn Hunt as conversion fodder for an Escher gang I found myself wondering about incorporating the dog from the set into the setting as well. Next to Macula he looks rather weedy, although to be fair I feel that Macula really should be the biggest dog in town, a hound so steeped in machismo that he doesn’t merely chase cars he drives them as well. Pity the Necromundan postman…

To quote the gangers of House Orlock “I like big mutts and I cannot lie…”. Every dog has his day however and even Macula has his limits…

Next to Aximilion, the faithful sidekick of Rogue Trader Elucia Vhane, the Godsworn dog looks a little more impressive…

Throw in a few mechanical odds and ends and you could be looking at a fine candidate for a converted cyber-mastiff, or even a phyrr cat (not something to say too loudly in front of all these dogs but there is something distinctly feline about him – truly the influence of Chaos will permit any heresy!)

Of course chaos hounds aren’t a new thing and for many years the Warhammer universes have echoed to the laughter of thirsting dogs.

Some of you must have wondered, as I did prior to the release of Wrath and Rapture, how the newest iteration of flesh hounds compare to the outgoing resin models.

It’s a well-known fact that one should let sleeping dogs lie, but the aphorism doesn’t clarify what one should do with dead dogs which provides just the kind of wiggle room that necromancers are bound to exploit.

Not all dogs are purebred. Richard here, for example, is clearly a mongrel, with a genetic heritage at even incorporates some avian ancestors.

And some of the beasts masquerading as dogs around here aren’t even dogs at all!

As I said at the start then, nothing terribly new or surprising here, but maybe it’ll be helpful if you’re planning to let slip the dogs of war yourself.