One more dwarf

I decided today would be a good day to devote to painting another dwarf for my warband though I didn't anticipate multiple fights with spilled paint pots and a leaky ink bottle (luckily not too much paint/ink was lost and nothing was damaged.). Hopefully all the messy struggle was worth it. Here he is so far!

I'll probably go back after I'm done with the unit and do a bit of shading and highlighting and whatnot, but my goal right now is just to get a decent paint job on everyone. I used a few unusual color choices with the yellowish-brown spear, axe handle and crossbow which I may go over in a brown ink wash, and the very purple hat. The beard and gloves look very red in the photograph. They don't look quite so intense in person, but they could still use a bit of a wash.

There are quite a few noticeable spots where a bit of paint of another color got onto something, like on the crossbow, which should be covered up by a wash and some highlights. Still, I'm happy enough with him for now and I'm sure I can improve on him later on.

Dwarf Adventurer Warband Begins!

Hello! I mentioned in an earlier post I would be starting my journey into the world of Warhammer Fantasy Battle 3rd edition with a small unit of dwarf adventurers. (Right here). While I'm still working to get my Blood Bowl team finished, I am getting a little tired of it and I felt I needed to take a break and do something much different for a bit.

In my previous post I said I was able to find a bunch of old 80's citadel paints and inks and posted some pictures of the starter sets. The rest of the group arrived in the mail just the other day and I immediately went to work sorting the colors and which were dry, watery or just right. I wanted to give the dwarf adventurers an authentic 80's feel as I think the best way to start into an oldhammer army is to give it the essence of the 80's and what better way to do that than the original paints and inks?

Opening the box!

Dry paints on the left, watery in the middle, good to go on the right.

Once the sorting was done I was ready to try out the new old paints. There's quite an assortment of colors there, although I realized I don't have a black, the white is dried up and I don't have a good dark brown. I'll probably order a couple things off Black Hat Miniature's Coat d'arms range rather than hunting down the individual citadel paints. Aside from those however, I think I've got just about all I would need for these.

Anyways, I stayed up late last night and worked on the unit leader from start to finish. I did a lot of experimental things with the paint and used colors I wouldn't ordinarily have used but I think it's good to step outside of what's "right" and try some things. He was a quick job, only took about 3 hours or so, so it's nothing amazing but I think I was able to get an old style feeling out of it.

As my friend said he is "Very... green." Even his beard is green! Oh well. I think he's good for a first attempt using the old paints. He was really really experimental. I wasn't sure how most of the things I tried would work out. I kind of substituted the greens for browns in a lot of areas. 

Imperial Purple shirt, teal cloak with green ink wash, spearstaff brown crossbow and axe handle with brown ink washes, goblin green gloves with green ink wash. The inks were pretty fun to use but I feel like they make the model a bit too shiny. I wonder if a matte varnish would help with that? But maybe the old paints are just glossier than the newer paints.

He needs a name. Hmm....

Well, there's the first step to the start of my dwarf warband! Above is other four models I'll be starting with. 'tis a good start, aye?

Back!

Hello! I've been busy the past few weeks with my trip to Las Vegas and lots of homework/essay writing/school stuff to finish so I haven't had that much time to paint sadly but now that is behind me and I should be painting and doing Warhammery things again!

I've not finished basecoating my team yet, but I'm nearly there! All that's left are masks and beards for the dwarfs, some trimming and hat coloring on the bull centaurs and the pants/gloves of the hobgoblins as well as the 6th Chaos Dwarf player who I've just started on.

 I don't have a photo of the team yet. I'm waiting until I've finished the full base coat on them for that, but here's a good example of how the majority of the team looks so far.

Hey!! Pass me the ball! I'm open!

I was lucky enough to get the old 80's citadel paint sets including the inks recently and I've been super excited to use them. Most of the paints are still good. Some are a little bit dry and a few have become very jiggly, but the majority of them are still good to go as they are which is impressive considering these paints are about 30 years old.

I really love the artwork on the boxes. They just don't make them like this anymore!

The inks are still good as new. Wet and inky, ready to go. 

One for all the basic colors!

I did a test with the green ink just to see how they'd work. I took an old blood bowl Troll I'd painted knarloc green and did a quick ink wash over the top.

Whurz da beef?

 I was really impressed with how smoothly it went over the model and I'm quite pleased with the look of it after it dried. I think it won't be too long 'til this guy is ready to throw some goblins across the field.

Excellent!

Comparison shot of the two trolls of the goblin team Wyld Stallyns. Bill on the left, painted in knarloc green with no ink wash, Ted on the right same base with ink wash.

I hope to get my chaos dwarfs base coated soon as I'm getting a little bit tired of working on them and I'm ready to try something else for a bit. My 3rd blood bowl match shouldn't be too far away and I'd like to get them ready for that as well.

I'm also going to start on my dwarf adventurers unit to begin my dwarf army soon and I'm thinking I'll just use the old paints for that to try and give it an authentic 80's look and to really see how well they work.

Blood Bowl Game 1 Report

Four Feet of Chaos V.S. The Hellburgh Squeakers

DEATH FROM BELOW! GO FOR THE KNEES!

(The results from the Chaos Dwarf point of view)

The team so far

The height depraved players of Four Feet of Chaos served their chaotic patrons well in the great bloody ritual that is Blood Bowl and brought glory to themselves winning 3-0 against the Hellburgh Squeakers who squeaked their painful death cries from under their stocky boots. The day was temperate and cool, a good day for killing in the name of the great unholy ones and at the start of the second half Tzeentch decided to part the clouds and bless us with a bright sun to keep the vile skaven rats from making a sneaky come-back. (Which they're known for doing.)

In the first half on the first turn of the game, the Hellburgh Squeakers took the ball. Their Rat Ogre, Phillip, with much enthusiasm and ferocity, smacked the Chaos Dwarf team leader, The Chaos Dwarf Blocker Gharzhakh Bloodhammer, an especially menacing dwarf who earned his name from permanently staining his hammer red with the blood of countless elves in a great war, on the head leaving him unconscious in the pits until the start of the next half in which he made a come-back and scored a touchdown on the last turn of the game.

The Rat Ogre's arrogance was repaid in double when the Chaos Dwarf Blocker Khatan Ogreslayer badly injured Phillip on the first turn of the second half, sending him to the apothecaries to miss the next game.

Khatan Ogreslayer smacking a gutterrunner

Rhalkos The Destroyer, a great black bull centaur who once stomped an entire halfling village flat beneath his hooves, caused so much terror in That One Rat that That One Rat tried to flee but was ultimately stomped flat and crushed dead. (Sadly it was from a dodge roll, not a block, so the gods did not bestow any star player points on Rhalkos for this.)

Shazhakh Ironhoof, The reddish brown Bull Centaur and apprentice to Rhalkos proved himself to Khorne by spilling the blood of a rat named Scoob, crushing him beneath his iron hooves and giving him a serious concussion, causing him to miss the next game and have a permanent -1 to armour value. Shazhakh Ironhoof also scored a touchdown for the game, leveling him up.

The Hobgoblin player, Nottan Orc, who is a rather skinny orc disguised as a hobgoblin to get back at his old team who fired him for being too weak, with the bludgeoning fists of his team mates was able to score a touchdown in the first drive.

Złakoza The Hooved, named so for his cloven hooves mutation he received for some deed involving goats and unspeakable things only he and Slaanesh are aware of, was awarded the MVP, causing him to level up!

In the end, this spectacle of blood and gore in the name of the chaotic gods was greatly enjoyed by the fans and Four Feet of Chaos became a little more famous, earning almost enough gold to hire their sixth Chaos Dwarf player but not quite enough.

Their next opponent will be next weekend (after this because I will be in Las Vegas from Thursday to Wednesday) against Jeremy Ford and his Imhotep's Legion of Khemri!

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One extra photo of models for the team.
These two models will be used for the star players Nobbla Blackwart and Rashnak Backstabber. I also need to get a 6th chaos dwarf blocker painted for the team and the minotaur pretty soon.

Blood Bowl Team WIP + A couple extra pictures

The final players for my Blood Bowl Chaos Dwarf team arrived just two days ago. Just in time too, since the league starts the day after tomorrow so I've been working on them with all the free time I have available.

My dog died in his sleep yesterday so I had to bury him and I wasn't feeling up to painting a whole lot so progress has been slow, but any progress is good and there has been progress. I put the pictures in order from oldest to newest. I'll post another set of photos when all the base coats are done or nearly all done.

Here's the team all together. The minotaur won't be starting with the team but hopefully as the league goes on I'll be able to buy him onto the team. That gives me some extra time to paint him!

The 1st edition goblin was painted as a test model for the paint scheme (Blue/Black). He's the only one I have named so far. Hobb the Gob. I still need a team name too. (Masked Marauders? eh.. probably not.)

Since all the chaos dwarfs are wearing masks I'm going to paint each mask in a different crazy bright color to try to get an old-school chaos feel. Yellow, red, pink, bright green, something else for the 5th. I think it should give them a neat look, though I haven't tested it yet so I guess we'll see.

A little further along yesterday.

Where I currently am at. Not a huge amount of progress but it's not bad considering the time I've had to work with. I'd like to get basecoating done by saturday at least, but who knows if I'll actually get that done. I shall try anyway.

Here's some individual photos.

The team leader. I still need a name for him, but I think he looks the most menacing of the group.

Behind shot

Guy with cloven hooves mutation. I like his expression.

One of the blockers with a split color pattern. Kind of feel like the odd boot should be a sort of off color that doesn't exactly fit the scheme and looks out of place like he just found it or something but I'm not really sure how well that'd go. Brown might work just as well.

One of the bull centaurs (Hthark the unstoppable 3rd edition model) I feel like these guys don't exaaaactly go with the 2nd edition chaos dwarfs but I really didn't have the time to convert my own boar centaurs or really find any old boar centaurs to convert and I found two of these guys for a good deal so I just went with them. I think they'll do fine.

The blue/black color scheme is going to be very prominent on these fellows. I think it'll look quite nice if I do it well.

The only hobgoblin who is actually a hobgoblin model. This guy's one of the 3rd edition hobgoblins. I need to find some more of them for 5 and 6 as I'll probably be needing to hire some more during the league. I was surprised how well he looked with a simple basecoat like this. Quite an easy model to paint.

Still unsure on his hood color though. Could do a bright orange or a simple brown or perhaps a dark red would do well enough.

Couple Hobb the Gob photos I think I posted previously, but just to keep everything together, here.

And that's all for blood bowl stuff. Just for fun I had a few extra pictures on my camera that are worth throwing up, so here.

Found this guy in a box of old things (along with a snotling carrying a squig on a tray!) with the rider all broken into several pieces. I glued him back together though I don't seem to have the rest of his lance.

Old school cockatrice!

Amusing silhouette from spraying figures. Surprising how well those silhouettes look. Can you tell which model is which?

The messy pile of minis section of my work table. (Zoats!)

A couple recent ebay buys I thought were pretty cool. Goblin king's chariot and red dragon.

Pull pig, pull!

Needs touched up a little but otherwise very cool!

And just for fun, a photo of a chaos dwarf mortar team who may be a couple of blood bowl fans. They certainly need to be painted up soon! I'm actually pretty excited for them.

And that's all! Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy my photos of old lead.

Paintlog + A Couple Games

My actual painting progress has been slow as I've been doing a lot of filing and cleaning of the minis and there's been some problems with the priming (The paint was coming on all fuzzy and gritty) so I had to strip and reprime a few guys.

It's been a little frustrating but I have gotten a few things done and I was able to play my first very very very basic game of 3rd edition fantasy battle!

I'll start off with the painting.

Here's an old chaos dwarf I had who was sitting on my painting table already primed from years and years ago and I felt inspired to paint him, so at around 2 in the morning I started to work and here's what I ended up with.

 I think he's pretty nice. Definitely can be improved on but perfectly suitable for tabletop use. I rather like how the red/blue color scheme turned out. I've always wanted to do do a chaos warband in that kind of scheme. Maybe this is a good start?

 This next guy is part of my Chaos Dwarf Blood Bowl team for the upcoming league (starts in a week!) A work in progress. I just finished base coating tonight.

He is of course, a 1st edition goblin. I'm rather short on blood bowl hobgoblins so this is Hobb the Gob. He'll be pretending to be a hobgoblin for the duration of the league. (Also two 1st edition orcs have snuck onto the team in disguise.)

I was kind of using him as a test model for the rest of the team as well since I didn't know how the black and blue scheme would turn out. I think it's rather nice. Not sure I'm a fan of the gold gauntlet he's wearing but maybe a good armor wash over top will make it a bit more suitable. If nothing else I guess I can just say he has a golden arm. (As in he's really good at throwing/catching?)

Now for my first Warhammer Fantasy Battle 3rd edition game. It was very simple, very basic and very small. My friend came over and brought a unit of 10 skaven to do battle with a unit of 10 dwarfs. Several turns were spent crossing the table to eachother and then the fight started.

My dwarfs attempted to charge the skaven upon seeing them come through the woods but their light armour and shields slowed them down a little too much. They barely failed the charge.

The skaven were clanrats and my dwarfs were warriors with spears. The clan rats had a magical banner which gave +2 to combat resolutions instead of +1. The rats then charged my unformed unit of dwarfs and didn't have much trouble forcing them to rout.

After routing and rallying several times and losing half of the unit mostly to free hacks (and losing the standard as well.) my dwarfs were pushed back until they were at the edge of the table.

There was not much that could be done against the oncoming skaven so they were forced to retreat the battlefield in shameful defeat. (but at least they looked nice doing it!) They'll be back though and in greater numbers!

Overall it was pretty fun. My friend had never even looked at the 3rd edition rules before I'm pretty sure so I had to look a lot of things up and try to remember rules I'd read 2 weeks before and there were some things we were unsure of (like are free hacks only on units in base contact or is it for all of the front line of the pursuing unit?) I feel like the magical banner really pushed things in the skaven's favor, but my failed charge also made things start off pretty badly.

Just from this one small one on one fight I kind of like the combat better than the current fantasy edition. There seems to be a lot more to it. The maneuvering system is really confusing but it apparently is the most complex of all the editions in that regard. I hope I can start to understand things better so our next game can be bigger and more interesting.

I also set up a makeshift sort of 40k/space hulk/space marine assault type thing on another table in my room using a bunch of my old video game collection.

I bought a couple of these starter box things about a year ago for 5$ each. They come with 5 space marines, 8 genestealers, some paints, a brush, a little red die and very simple rules to play with and some mission scenarios for you to try.

Image taken from SantaCruzWarhammer

The scenarios and simple rules inspired me to set up this table and try to make an interesting game from it.

There's two sides, a Space Marine (or in this case Squat) team and a group of 8 genestealers spread out around the table in groups of twos. Each model is moved individually, so no keeping unit coherency or shooting at a single target with all the guys or anything like that. You can split guys up, keep them together, shoot at different things, whatever. It also uses the very simple combat rules on the back of the box's manual.

The squat's objective is to get a valuable relic from the armory which is north of the loading bay (the place with the land raider). The armory door, however, is locked, so they must first get to the security console to open it. (the room directly on the other side of the wall where they start.)

From the security console they can control a turret in the loading bay (the unpainted metal ork) which can fire two bolter shots per turn at a target. Inside the land raider is an energy shield which gives the squats a +1 armor save.

The genestealer's objective is simply to kill all the squats.

There is also a mad ork roaming the halls who is controlled by each player during their turn. Though it might've been better to make him a bit more unpredictable.

In the end I think things need to be rearranged a bit and perhaps it was too hard for the squats. In these halls of death all five squats were killed, and so was the ork, and there were 3 genestealers left alive. I'd like to tweak things a bit as even though the squats didn't get very far, it was a lot of fun.