The Mean Green Geezers – Part 5

Well, I spent a lot longer talking about painting them than I did actually painting them, which goes to show these projects are a lot more achievable if you just crack on with them. Yes, that’s right, my Blood Bowl Orc team are ready to take to the pitch at last (minus their troll who’ll come later – possibly much later…). 

There’s quite a lot of stuff to cover in this post, covering as it does all the odds and ends needed to complete the team. First of all we’ve got the final two orc players.

Add them to the ones I’ve already painted and we’ve got six linemen ready to do whatever it is they do (anyone coming here for in-depth tactical advice must be feeling sorely disappointed right now eh!).

Now one thing I do know is that if you want to play Blood Bowl you need some balls. Who wants to see an Orc’s balls? You do? Ok then!

Then we have some re-roll tokens. I tried to make these look like artefacts which belonged in the setting partly because this made them easier to paint and partly because I thought it would look cool. As well as the two for the Orc team I painted the pair for the Human team at the same time.

We also have these which I believe are turn markers. They proved to be tricky to photograph, mostly because they keep falling over, so I’m wondering about sticking them on bases for a bit of extra stability. Is this a normal solution or does it have any game play implications? As usual, if there are any more experienced Blood Bowl fans reading this who want to share their thoughts I’m all ears. If there’s no major reason not to they’re going on bases ASAP, all this falling over every time I look at them is bloody annoying, and only likely to be more so mid-game.

Lastly, what we’ve all been waiting for, the whole team ready to give any opposing players a kicking.

Of course for that to happen I’ll need to find some opposing players for them to kick, and the easiest way will probably be to paint my own. I’ve been working away on kitbashing my human team and I quite like the look of most/all of the other teams as well. Life is looking quite busy over the next few weeks however so it might not be for a little while yet. Oh and at some point I need to roll up my sleeves and paint that damn troll…  

Ironskullz Boys

I’ve never been particularly enthused by Warhammer Underworlds as a game, I’m not that keen on card games and the tagline “The Ultimate Competitive Miniatures Game” is kryptonite to the likes of me who leans more towards enjoying myself and socialising if dice are getting rolled at all, rather than engaging in cut-throat, win-at-all-costs competition. That said the miniatures are pretty damn gorgeous so I picked up Ironskullz Boys just for the fun of painting them (which after all if the mainstay of my hobby anyway – gaming barely makes it into the top ten reasons I do this at the best of times).

Despite how much I love these four miniatures I couldn’t resist making a few minor tweaks and adjustments. Boss-man Gurzag Ironskull got a new head which I reckon makes him look even fiercer (and more of a show-off) than the original, and also makes him uniquely mine.

Likewise his sidekick Bonekutta got a new head – with a helmet, which I think emphasises his brutish power and strength.

The other two ‘ard boyz in the warband, Basha and Hakka, were pretty much perfect as is, in my opinion, so I left them well alone.

And here we have them, my first ever Underworld’s Warband, ready for action in case anyone ever decides to convince me to become a ruthless power-gamer!

I must confess that since painting these the itch to tackle some more greenskins is back. I’ve got a Blood Bowl team I’m meant to be painting, and there’s always a need for more Orks in my 40k collection so watch this space.

Green Iz Best – Part 10

Work on my mob of greenskins continues apace and my goal of completing all one hundred boys by the end of the year is now tantalisingly close. To recap, for anyone new to this, I’ve had a long standing ambition to own 100 unique ork boys – once it was a pipe dream, then it became a distant but challenging target to chip away at, and now it’s almost at my fingertips. Following a combination of challenge and encouragement by various readers of this blog – most notably Azazel who’s been painting along with me and whose old-skool orks are well worth checking out – I declared my intention to complete the project before 2019 rolls into 2020. Let’s take a look at the newest recruits.

This one was something of a challenge to get right, the bonesplitters/savage orcs jaw ended up covering most of his face no matter how I positioned it, but after a bit of fiddling (and a fair amount of muttering) I ended up with something I was fairly happy with.

I’ve always liked the idea of adding an orky gunslinger to the squad and I finally got around to it.

And there we have them, five done – five more to go.

Whilst I was working on the boyz I spotted this old mek, sitting at the back of the shelf and gathering dust. I built him at least a decade ago, when the plethora of bits we have access to for converting was far narrower than it is today, and my skills were considerably less. He really is past his best so I decided to take the opportunity to touch up his paint job and make a few adjustments (mainly in the form of a new head – what was I thinking with the old version?! I suppose I was young and foolish but I’m not sure I was ever that young…).

And here’s the new version, which you’ll hopefully agree is an improvement.

Not a bad little burst of productivity if I may say so myself, and with the end in sight I’ll be aiming to get back to the boys sooner rather than later. First off though I need to concentrate on some Skaven – the Orks aren’t the only thing I’ve promised to complete by the end of the year after all…

Green Iz Best – Part 4

Just sneaking in another model in-between all the terrain (even though sneaking isn’t something an ork nob usually approves of!). According to the new ork codex an ork nob with a Waaagh! banner (a model with which regular readers will know I have something of a love/hate relationship) is no longer part of a squad but instead is a lone individual. Not that I pay too close attention to the rules but any excuse to paint another ork ought to be seized upon right? Surely I wasn’t expected to tolerate my poor nobs squad being a man down?

There we go; the nobs are back to being ten strong and balance has been restored! Of course now I’ll have to start work on a second squad…

Squabblin’ Goblins – Part 6

Before we leave September behind (and yes, I’m aware we’re now in October, Greenday just woke up) I wanted to take a quick look at the progress of my goblin army. I tackled them as my contribution to Azazel’s Neglected Model Month challenge in an effort to clear out the vast, unpainted hoard that was gathering around the edges of my painting desk. At one point I even harboured the lofty ambition of completing all of my spearmen and archers although as it turned out, with the plague furnace to finish off as well, this proved to be biting off more than I could chew. Luckily Azazel’s October challenge is to complete a squad so I’ll take a stab at doing exactly that. In the meantime however here’s a few more additions to the army which have slunk in over the past week.

A nice thing about the goblins is the number of heroes which can be packed into an army so here’s a goblin Big Boss accompanied by a suitably toothy squig.

I love the way that the squig’s crazed expression is mirrored on the face of the goblin – or maybe it’s the other way around? They do say people end up looking like their pets…

Speaking of squigs I still haven’t finished the last one for the little squad of them I started earlier in the month so I suppose that’s going to be another one to finish in October. I did manage to get the squig handlers for the squad done however but in my fugue I forgot the squig itself.

Every night goblin will tell you that you always need more fanatics so here’s another one bouncing into action. Despite my best efforts he’s come out a lot darker than the last one, and there’s something a little odd about how the highlights have behaved, but nevermind, he’ll do!

Unleash the fanatics!

What!? You still want more?! You’re demanding you are! Alright then, couple of netters be enough for you?

Given the hassle I had getting their eyes right it’s faintly upsetting that you can’t really make them out in these pictures but damn it I’m not going through the bother of photographing them again!

With this being the end of Neglected Model Month I also wanted to take a look at progress overall. With that in mind here’s how the army looked back at the start of the month…

…And here it is now.

Solid progress I’m sure you’ll agree, so big thanks once again to Azazel for setting his challenges and encouraging us all to focus our efforts.

I’ll be carrying on with the goblins throughout October alongside various other projects. By way of inspiration I’ve started reading Skarsnik by Guy Haley which may well be the best Black Library novel I’ve ever read. I’m only about half way through but as it stands I can only add to the praise that’s already been heaped on it. If you want to read the biography of the greatest hero the Old World ever knew (Gobbla natch) then this is the book for you. Hopefully by the end of the month I’ll have amassed a horde worthy of the true king of Karak Eight Peaks.

Squabblin’ Goblins – Part 5

The trouble with batch painting is it doesn’t leave a lot for anyone not involved in the process to look at. For anyone desperate for an update however here’s the state of play on the night goblins and the heap of models still to be completed.

As you can see there’s a lot of partially done robes and the early stages of a lot of green skin, but also plenty that still needs attention. Honestly I think I might abandon my plan to get them all done by the end of the month – nice though that would be to achieve my enjoyment of my hobby shouldn’t be restricted by the struggle to meet self imposed deadlines.

With so much still at the WIP stage however there’s not a lot to show in the way of progress this week – but not much doesn’t mean nothing at all. This little dude, a goblin champion from Avatars of War, may actually be the first goblin model I ever bought and he’s been sitting around part painted for a very long time indeed. As probably the longest neglected model that I’ve tackled as part of these challenges so far it was imperative that he saw the finish-line this month.

I also added two more squigs, bringing their population in the army up to four.

I know that technically speaking squigs come in units of at least ten, and who wouldn’t want a huge mob of bouncing mouths to gallop in disorderly style through the enemy lines, but I only own five of the little chaps so (once the last one is painted) I’ll be leaving the squad as is for now. Hopefully someday in the not too distant future Games Workshop will recognise the demand that exists for new plastic models for their most iconic race (the humble squig) and will see to it that the squig-faithful are rewarded at last.

Next week my priority will be finishing off my plague furnace for the Skaven (something of an all or nothing challenge, and failure would mean not meeting my personal Skaven goal for the first time in twenty-one months). However I’m sure one or two gobbos will also manage to scamper over the line to contest the rats’ dominance of the Underway even if I don’t get the whole mob done.

Squabblin’ Goblins – Part 3

I’ll save the rest of this week’s goblins for a round up on Friday but having finished this little guy over the weekend I thought it would be remiss not to show him off straight away. I picked him up (broken) from eBay for barely more than it must have cost to post him. He’s such a characterful little chap I knew straight away I wanted to give him a suitably important job in the nascent army. Given the size of the banner he was clearly meant to carry I promoted him on the spot to Battle Standard Bearer.

Back in the old days, before Sigmar was a real god, when human heroes wore big hats and bigger mustaches rather than golden armour and everyone trudged around on square bases, a battle standard bearer was something that every army simply had to have. Even I, with my less than nuanced understanding of the Warhammer rules, know that a battle standard bearer is one of those people that you simply don’t leave home without if you wanted to be taken seriously on the battlefields of the Old World, especially if you belong to a race of cowardly little runts like the gobbos.

Some would say the skull-weighted strips are falling counter to gravity but I reckon he’s either halfway through a titanic effort to get the thing upright to being pulled over backwards by its weight (or most likely a combination of the two) and the whole thing is flapping around in the wind anyway.

Of course, it’s very much in the nature of goblins that even when you think they’re under control  more of them spring up from the shadows, or in this case the Royal Mail. That’s right, as soon as I set about getting the little greenies already on my desk painted a load more arrived via a wonderfully heavy box full of lead courtesy of the most recent Greenskin Wars kickstarter.

Some are quite small really…

…others are rather larger…

This chap doesn’t care about greenskins or their wars at all – he just wants to play some Blood Bowl. If only there was a team he could join…

Now technically speaking none of these are neglected models (yet!) but I’ll try to sneak one or two in before the end of the month anyway.

Squabblin’ Goblins – Part 2

So, having nailed my metaphorical colours (green, natch) to the mast and vowed to paint lots of goblins this month I gathered all of my part-painted models together and decided to make a start with them.

The current count of models I’ve found so far stands at forty spearmen and twenty archers, although others may be lurking in boxes waiting, as goblins do, ready to spring out and make mischief when I least expect it). The thought of batch painting my way through them all fills me with horror so I’ll try to tackle small sets and see how it goes.

Probably the biggest challenge I faced with these was not getting married to each and every one of them. I’m really not the kind of painter who enjoys the whole “speed-paint, batch-paint, bash ’em out in 12 seconds each, get a thousand points done every night” way of working. Nonetheless the aesthetic punch of a horde comes from the mass of nasty little Night Gobbos rushing across the landscape towards you, and not from how nice the eighteenth model looks, so long as he looks good enough not to let the side down. Still, it was a struggle, I may never win a golden daemon but for me the pleasure is in the painting, and these were about as close to speed-painting as I’ll ever go.

Not a bad start then, all things considered, but of course this is only the beginning. With all of these models having been WIP to begin with it’s giving me a bit of a head start on the project. Of course it also means it all gets harder from here!

Aren’t You A Little Short To Be A Warboss?

A quick heads up to anyone who’s interested, the third Greenskin Wars kickstarter is now underway. I don’t tend to promote, or even contribute to, many kickstarters, but I’m a huge fan of these goblins and I’ve had really good experiences with Greenskin Wars in the past – which means I’m rather overexcited about it all. I’ll admit however that I tend to find blog posts extolling the virtues of some kickstarter or other tend not to get more than a passing glance from me, so I intend to legitimise the whole thing and explain that the real reason I’m writing about this at all is that the new range of goblin models has me inspired to actually put paint on some of the ones I’ve already bought. For the moment I want to keep focussed on some other projects but at the very least I can indulge my urge to paint greenskins with this goblin hero.

Most likely he’ll end up serving as a goblin boss when I finally get around to my long planned night goblin army (someone has to contest the Skaven dominance of the Underway after all).

Boyz Will Be Boyz – Part 7

For a long time I’ve harboured an ambition to own a horde of at least a hundred ork boys, with every one of them looking distinct from the rest. As much as possible I’ve tried to ensure that every ork I’ve painted has a unique head (although the aim of the exercise isn’t to make my life tough, if the odd bonce gets duplicated in the army I’m not going to be lying awake at night worrying about it). With the new additions I’ve made over the past week I’m up to sixty-three angry greenskins, which means it’s definitely time for a group shot.

As ever before you give yourself eyestrain click on the pictures to get a proper look at them. You may also wish to play a version of ‘Where’s Wally’ with that old-skool Ork from last week…He’s lurking in there somewhere…