Empire Witch-Hunter

I wonder if you can guess what this post will be about... ? .... 

any ideas? .. ogres perhaps? .. more maneaters maybe?.. 

AHA!.. you have fallen foul to my masterfully conceived trap!!! Mwhahahaha...

yeah.. i agree, lets cut the melodrama.. 

so to business...

today we have, the 'new' empire witch hunter!

i've had this model since it came out a few months ago.. i actually pre-ordered it.. not that i intended to use one in my army, i just liked the model (although he does currently act as my general of the empire)..  

I also painted this model more or less as soon as i got it.. which means this is hardly an up-to-date post, i just didn't have any photos of it until now...
I chose to stray from the GW paint scheme slightly as i didn't want him to be overbearingly red.. i was aiming for a slightly more 'Van helsing' type look.. although i still wanted to hint my armies colours.

This model was actually the first finecast model i ever bought and i have to say that sadly it lives up to its rather unfortunate internet nickname 'crapcast' (and all the other variations). The model needed a fair bit of green stuffing to repair it.. such as fixing the cloak (which had a big hole in it), the hat (which was broken) and rightside of his face and nose (which was just a mess) and countless air bubbles across the model. Although this was fairly easily solved with some greenstuff and abit of patience, its still not the sort of thing you want to be required to do to a new model. It did however give me a chance to try out the liquid greenstuff for the first time and i have to say i liked it alot, makes filling in gaps alot easier and quicker!
This model was also the first time i tried out the army painter quick-shade system, which i've already spoken about in another post... although as it was the first time i tried it, i did nearly completely ruin the model...
let me explain..
I spent ages painting up the model, applying my own highlights and shading as normal, with the intention of using quick-shade to add further definition. After dipping the model and letting it dry i realised that i'd forgotten it would come out shiny.. so i bought some army painter matt varnish spray and coated the model the same way i would with games workshop primers.. and watched in horror as the heavy coat wrinkled and deformed. As a result i had to carefully scratch of the wrinkly bits, reapply some of the paint, brush on the quick-shade in those places and then lightly 'dust' with matt varnish. I should note that i don't blame the products (which are excellent) it was simply me being a ponce!

So yeah.. thats it for this post!
i've got some more models ready to blog but need to grab the camera first..
so i'll try and upload something next week!
   

   

 

Maneater conversions- Boxing ogre

Well, as promised i have another maneater... the boxer!

If your anything like me.. which to be fair, your probably not..
you would have picked up the ogre bulls box, examining the ironfists on the sprues.. and gone straight for the one that looks like a solid iron boxing glove (probably whilst mouthing the lyrics to the final verse of a certain Simon and Garfunkel song.. i'm sure you can figure out which one)

well this gave me an idea.. how about an ogre, that is so confident/violent/psychotic that instead of dispatching his enemies with a sword, or even perhaps an axe.. he would much rather bludgeon them to death with his own, allbeit metal encased, hands..

naturally, he would have to be a maneater..

this 'conversion' was very easy.. really more of a kit bashing than anything else.. it uses the body and ironfists from the ogre bulls set and the head and arms from the mournfang box.. as i found the arms were generally more dramatically posed than in the bulls box..

A very small amount of greenstuff was needed to fill in the gaps between the arms and the body.. clearly games workshop didn't consider interchangeable parts when they made this set.. but it was easy enough to sort out so can't really complain..

more greenstuff was needed to cover up the right hand... as all the ironfists where made to be left handed.. apparently there aren't many ambidextrous ogres wondering around the place.. so a small blob which i flattened out and voila problem solved. 

Alot of the character of this maneater however will have to come out in the painting and basing... i plan to paint him splattered with blood (although trying to figure out how to make it look right, as alot of blood effects on models look terrible) and i'm thinking maybe a rather battered looking body lying on the floor in front of him..
 

i don't know when i'll post something next, as i'm away all weekend.. but i'll try and get something up on monday.. I just finished 3 ironguts today, so they will be added to the mounting list of models i've yet to blog..  on the brightside, it gives you all something to look forward to.. in theory

let me know what you think of the maneaters so far.. i've just figured out an outline for the last 2 and am also considering converting my own tyrant as i'm not overly keen on the gamesworkshop one..

stay tuned.

Maneater conversions- Tribal ogre

Well, with this unemployment comes more modeling madness, specifically more ogre maneaters. Being a crafty whatsit however i'm going to blog them individually- so that i don't have one HUGE post and then nothing for a few months- you'll just have to deal with the installments.

unlike the last conversion, this one is actually completely my own creation (from ideas to modeling), although i have no doubt that someone somewhere has probably done this already.

The idea was for a tribal, almost native American ogre.. hence the headdress and the tomahawk. The advantage of this particular conversion is that he can also be used as the musician for my Maneater unit...

This ogre was actually very easy to make... and only involved a minor amount of greenstuff work. It was simply a case of modeling a headband and some feathers (although as this was the first time i've tried this.. i'm be interested to see how they will look painted).. and creating a tomahawk out of and ogre sword and a banner pole from the ogre bulls kit.

Despite its simpleness, i like it.. and plan to paint him covered in tribal tattoos to really complete the look!

Things to look forward to.. i have finished two more maneaters and painted my empire witch hunter!.. so expect another post next week sometime..  

In the meantime, let me know what you think.. comments and criticisms are always welcome!

Maneater conversions- 1st of many.. The Shaman

As i mentioned before i've been working on converting my ogre bulls, from the battalion set, into Maneaters!
The finished unit will include 6 and i want them to be as diverse and characterful as possible ... i want them to look like they have traveled and fought in many different lands.

The design for the first one i cannot take credit for.. the original was made by 'Lew_b81' over at warseer... http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?250907-Ogre-Maneaters/page11  .. I've found that although i am capable of doing the conversions i struggle to come up with good ideas to make cool looking miniatures.. so for now I'm stealing them..

I thought Lew_b81's truth-sayer/shaman ogre was awesome, in fact i thought all of his ogres were awesome.. so i'd definitely recommend checking them out! 

As you can see it basically involved reshaping his right arm, using greenstuff to sculpt a new shoulder and the muscles in the arm... so that he had his staff (a tomb kings banner with the skull from the ogre bulls standard .. minus the horns.. and a gorgons earings).. resting on his neck. and a big ass rock on his back held on by a greenstuff belt-type-thing.

Getting the rock right was actually alot harder than i was expecting.. and in the end i decided the best way was to not be a perfectionist and to just attack it with a pair of clippers and see what happens.. also it very easy to forget how small these models are ..(even ogres).. and so it took a while to get it looking proportioned.

Rather annoyingly.. i spent a long time sculpting the muscles on his right am only to have them covered later by the straps.. but nevermind.. overall i'm very happy with it and will come up with some ideas of my own.. i've already started a native red Indian ogre which i came up with the concept for, so hopefully i'll get that uploaded soon..

in the meantime, feel free to comment...
if you have any ideas for cool maneaters let me know.. I'm thinking pirate, cowboy, boxer, maybe a skyrim related one... who knows..

I'M AN OGRE!!!

Well I've finally finished uni now and as a result i have lots of free time to waste.. which is great news for my warhammer armies!

I finished painting my witch hunter a few weeks ago but haven't got any pictures of it yet so that will have to feature in a later post.. i have however got a few pics of my first completed ogre models, two leadbelchers.

After play testing a few lists, these guys don't actually appear in my army anymore but i liked the models and they may find a place at 2000pts. (we'll see)...

 I recently purchased some army painter products (strong tone, dark tone, Matt varnish,white primer, some paints and some 'tufts') and so have been experimenting with all of them. I'm already a big fan of the quick shade dips and the tufts but was less satisfied with the white primer.. it is very thick and so you have to pay alot of attention and lightly dust the models with the primer.. other than that it works fine, but i'm a lazy guy and prefer games workshops primers which are much thinner.    

The quick shade dips i really can't recommend enough.. and although some may consider it to be cheating, they are great at getting an army painted to a decent standard quickly!

I'll upload more pics when i have time. In the meantime I'm working on converting Ogre bulls in Maneaters, as although i love the models i don't want to spend £90 in order to get 6... i've already made 2 of them and have a few pics so will upload them later in the week.

as always, comments are criticisms are welcome!  

Night-Bringer = LAD!

Well, I've just come to the realization that i haven't posted in some time, so i feel the need to post in an attempt to keeping my momentum going! that being said, this is only going to be a quick post...

So recently I've been devoting my entire life to the hobby... hardcore i know... having gotten back into painting and modeling etc. I'm now starting to get back into the whole gaming side of things, although i seem to get consistently flattened with my squishy empire army, leading me to purchase an ogre kingdoms battalion.. against the warnings and protests of my friends. But i digress..

So recently i played a 40k game.. for the first time in many many years...  and, much to my surprise (and amusement) i absolutely destroyed my friends space marine army using my old necrons.  Now, without a doubt the 'man of the match' was my night-bringer.. who we realised halfway through the game couldn't even be wounded by half the models in my oppositions army, let alone killed. To celebrate this fantastic show of power (cutting through dreadnoughts and terminators like they were made of plastic... see what i did there..) i decided to dedicate this post to him.

I have to preface this by saying that it is still very much a W.I.P.. (to use my cool street lingo) .. the only thing I've really done is the base, i haven't even started on the rest of the model.
So, having had this model for years, and loving it, i decided to strip all the paint and give it the paint job it truly deserves.. but not content to merely repaint it, i decided to do something cooler with the base.. which has been the one part of the model that i felt was underwhelming... i mean, why are there scarab beetles coming out of a rock-like-thing? just why!?

So i decided it would be infinitely cooler if he was bursting out of the ground, revealing a pool of lava beneath (not that he cares, being a god and that). So i got to work with the poly-filler, adding some bits of slate that i snapped of my mums water feature (she'll kill me when she notices), painted it with some quick dry-brushing of different shades of Grey and voila..       

This is probably a better picture, showing a more 'zoomed in' view of the base. I plan to paint some 'source lighting type thing' on the cape.. to show that its right next to molten lava.. which should be interesting, but fun..

Let me know what you think of it so far..

Well.. this didn't turn out to be such a short post afterall...

I'll try to post more pics of this model when it's finished, but at the moment I'm working on so many different things, inc. deffcopters, an oger army, the new empire witch hunter, and my own war altar (which i think i mentioned in the last post) so i'll get cracking and post lots of more things!! so watch this blog!!

The army so far..

I have been promising myself and my loyal fan base (thank you both) that I'll upload another post and today i shall finally deliver!

Being a fairly new blog, i figured it would be a good idea to show what my empire army looks like so far. Fortunately for me although i bought the army secondhand, almost all of it was unpainted... so i didn't have to spend hours removing the paint before applying my own. 

First up we have my artillery...

The middle model is infact a minor conversion, which i would love to claim to be my own but was actually done by a friend..  its difficult to see in this picture, but he's been positioned so he's sitting on a box, with green stuff used to fill in the resulting gap between his torso and body - very nice indeed...

 I wanted the artillery pieces to look well used... so i used washes of watered-down chaos black over a base coat of brazen brass, an effect i liked alot, so you'll notice that it gets used on a number of my models. For the pieces below i also used water-down hawk turquoise, to make it look like aged brass...

The handgunners were the first fantasy models i bought.. and so, as i had nothing else to paint at the time, i was able to spend a fair amount of time on them, which is why they're probably the best painted so far... 

I want to get ALOT more of these.. so i can kill as much of the enemy as possible before they get close enough to flatten me in close combat...

Excuses time-
The swordsmen are probably my worst painted so far, as they were very rushed. With the easter holidays coming up and with it the promise of many games.. i am desperately trying to get my army painted to at least a basic gaming standard, which means the rank and file don't get as much attention as the more attention grabbing models. I intend to revisit them at some point in the not too distant future and tidy them up and add abit more detail etc.

 

For the shields, i wanted to make them look like the Spartans shields from the film 300 and so i painted them the same way as the cannon and mortar. The beauty of it is that it looks good and only took about 10 minutes to do the shields for the entire unit.

All of the models i've finished so far have been based in the same way... First i glue sand and small stones/pieces slate to the bases... then i paint this a dark grey (i mix my own) and drybrush over this with a lighter grey... next i use a brown wash, to add abit of colour variation to the earth and make it look less 'flat'... then i rub some PVA glue onto the base with my finger (this makes it more random, and look more natural) and sprinkle on some Citadel snow.. finally i use some watered down PVA glue to seal it all in.. so far none of the snow has fallen fallen off, but only time will tell.

The final model is a W.I.P... the basics are there but with this model i want to put in some real time and effort. (Even if he is going to spend most games sitting back in one of the artillery crews)

Recently I've been working on my white wolf knights and a unit of halberdiers, so i should have the knights up fairly soon (I'm trying something slightly fancier with the bases, so their taking abit longer). I've also just ebay myself some bits, which I'm going to need for my war altar that I'm making pretty much from scratch.. so stay tuned..

As always, comments are more than welcome.

And soo it begins...

SO.. i just got back into the hobby, and agreed to start playing LOTR again. After a few games and some new Haradrim purchases :D my mates began to pester me to start collecting fantasy (first time for everything)

So eventually i relented, and bought an empire army from said mate and with a few additions of my own, courtesy of ebay (Knights and Handgunners) i had the makings a decent force. It should be noted that this decision to collect fantasy was on the strict condition that i did not, under any circumstances, start collecting 40k again.. i've been down that road before and it ended up being rather expensive.

So naturally i'm now collecting necrons and orks to complete the list..

Cue facepalm.

Anyway.. the punchline is i'll be posting models from all of those on here.. i know, aren't i just the best.. i just keep on giving!

The first lot are Beastmen minotaurs, which i painted for a friend who started fantasy at the same time as me..
once properly based i think they should look pretty cool.. but let me know what you think! :D

Sorry about the fingers in the pictures.. these were taken by my mate.. as i go on i'll probably sort out some method to take better quality pictures, we'll see..



I'll be posting lots more soon, i'm pretty much constantly painting atm.. to the despair of my uni lecturers :/