CCXXXVI. Greater Bloodfiend

A Greater Bloodfiend, which I've made for an art trade with @thesigilist. Just like their smaller, bipedal cousins, Greater Bloodfiends are spirits of ancient warhorses that were fed a carnivore's diet.

Bloodfiend and Greater Bloodfiend.

This model is converted from parts of a Perry plastic horse and a skull I sculpted for Harwood Hobbies. The rest is putty.

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Bone trees from @helgewilhelm arrived in the mail. Thanks Helge! They will be perfect scenery for my Necrons. Seems I'll have to buy the other three variants that are in preparation, too. Real pig bones were used to create the originals, and the lovely textures were well preserved in these resin casts. They're still available in Helge's Etsy shop.

CCXXXV. AoS28: Skeletons and Zombies

Adding to my collection of monsters for my AoS28-RoSD mashup. These skeletons were based on Mantic skeletons I bought second hand a while ago. I gave them all head and shield swaps, and most got new weapons as well. I'm not a fan of Mantic skellies, but even just a different head can go a long way with them.

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The zombies are also from Mantic. Unlike their skeletons, their zombies are really good! I did very little converting here, it was mostly messing with their faces a little bit. I wanted them to look more dried-up than bloated and oozing. I think I'll be needing more than these five, so I'm gonna expand the group at some point.

CCXXXIV. Barrels and Chests from Alien Lab Miniatures

Alien Lab Miniatures recently sent me some nice resin stuff to work with. For now, I painted a number of treasure chests and barrels for my AoS28 collection, to be used as objectives and/or scatter terrain. Thanks, Alien Lab!

 

Barrels come six per pack, all pretty much identical. They're hollow inside, but only the top half; with options to make them open or closed (lid is separate).

Treasure chests come eight per pack. Large, small, open, closed...

There are actually three different skull sets pictured here. One can never have too many skulls in their bits box.

 

80mm skull base. I'm planning to turn this into an objective/terrain feature for my AoS28 games.

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The chests have sculpted woodgrain, wich responds well to my wash + glaze painting method. They look hand-sculpted: no perfect right angles and dull syimmetry.

The barrels don't really have texture, so it needed to be added with paint. They look good! I made all but one closed. The open one got filled with clear resin to simulate water.

CCXXXIII. Untamed Beasts Painting Guide

The Heart-eater, final mini of the Untamed Beasts warband. As with the Iron Golems, I documented the painting process. Here's a step-by-step for you:

 UNTAMED BEASTS, START TO FINISH

1 - Zenithal priming: white over black. The recesses remain dark from the black spray, which gives me automatic shading in those hard to reach areas. The white provides a bright underlying surface for the glazes.

2 - Glaze of watered-down Rakarth Flesh (Citadel) over the enitre figure.

3 - Glaze of watered-down Zandri Dust (Citadel) over the enitre figure.

4 - Glaze of watered-down Russ Grey (Citadel) on the skin areas.

5 - Glaze of watered-down Dubai Brown (Scale75) on clothing, fur, weapon grips, helmet. Everything that's not skin or bone/horn.

6 - Glaze of watered-down Flat Black (Scale75) on the fur and helmet (not the helmet horns, though). I deliberately used the extra matt black for this.

7 - Glaze of watered-down Burnt Umber (Pebeo) on the leather belts and straps. I put the same glaze on the cape and loincloth, in uneven blotches.

8 - Agrax Earthshade and Nuln Oil washes (Citadel), slightly watered-down, on everything but the skin. More brown on lighter areas, more black on darker ones. Repeat where necessary.

9 - Highlight of sligthly thinned Rakarth Flesh on all bone and horn areas.

10 - Highlight of sligthly thinned Celestra Grey on all skin areas. Picking out the muscles, fingers and facial details.

11 - Another highlight on the skin, this time Celestra Grey (Citadel) mixed with a bit of Matt White (Pebeo).

12 - Highlight of Zandri Dust (Citadel) on select areas that were so far glazed with brown.

13 - Highlight of sligthly thinned Rakarth Flesh (Citadel) + Matt White (Pebeo) on bone and horn.

14 - The leather straps are a more reddish brown, so they were edge highlighted with a mix of Burnt Umber and Matt White (Pebeo).

15 - Watered-down Mephiston Red (Citadel) was added on certain areas as spot colour.

16 - The nipples were painted.

17 - The entire figure got a blacklining treatment. Slightly thinned Matt Black (Pebeo), applied with a precise brush where different parts/materials of the miniature meet. This step makes the mini clearer to read from a distance.

18 - The eyes were painted as white dots, for a particularly sinister look.

19 - The helmet and bit of chainmail on the loincloth were highlighted with Celestra Grey (Citadel) + Matt Black (Pebeo), and then Celestra Grey (Citadel).

The red spot colour was applied to the gaps between the weapons' teeth as a subtle wash. 

20 - Black and off-white splatter over the entire model. I do this because it adds so much to the atmosphere of a paintjob. I use an old #10 brush with stiff bristles for the task, flicking paint from it onto the mini. Depending on how thin the paint is, how loaded the brush and how far it is from the mini, the droplets will change in size, opacity and number. It's best you try for yourself to get a feel for it. Always check on a spare piece of paper before you go splatter the mini! If you make a mistake, you can still save it, but you only have seconds to wipe it off.

21 - The tattoos were done in freehand, using a #0 sable brush. The paint I used was a mix of Flat Black (Scale75) and Verdigris Blue (Secret Weapon). They're both rich in pigment, and will leave a neat line even when watered- down and made slightly transparent. The paint needs to be of such consistency to slide of the brush easily, but without running when it touches the mini. The brush needs to have a fine tip, but also enough body to hold a sufficient amount of paint to draw a few uninterrupted lines. I went with spiral patterns and dots, same designs I used on the entire warband. 

The final step was to base and spray-varnish the mini. My warband is now finished and ready to travel to its new home across the Atlantic.

CCXXXII. Untamed Beasts

I'm nearly finished with the second warband from the Warcry starter set: the Untamed Beasts. I'm not really a fan of these models, they're overly cluttered and their weapons are huge and unwieldy (though I do like the idea of bone weapons, and some of them actually look good; if only they were smaller). As with the Iron Golems, I limited my converting interventions mostly to shaving off excessive details. Lots of spikes and fang trinkets were cut. The mini that needed most work was the Rocktusk Prowler, who got its horns and thigh chaos star removed (along with a few more minor changes).

I wanted a dark, drab colour scheme, with the addition of freehand tattoos to liven up the patches of pale bare skin.

There is one model left to do: the Heart-eater. Saved him for last with the intention of recording the painting steps as I work on him. Coming soon.

Preytakers

Rocktusk Prowler and Beastspeaker

Plains-runners

First Fang

CCXXXI. AoS28: More Free Peoples Soldiers

My collection of soldiers for AoS28 has been slowly growing in the background, and now I've got nearly all companion types available in the Rangers of Shadow Deep rulebook. I guess we should finally try out the rules.

 

Men-at-Arms

 

Men-at-Arms are soldiers trained and armed for figthing at close quarters. Their standard equipment includes a sword and shield. Perry plastic HYW English + French, with Victrix Roman shields.

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 Archers

 

 Archers are soldiers trained and armed for figthing with bows. Perry plastic HYW English.
 

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Crossbowmen

 

Crossbowmen are soldiers trained and armed for figthing with crossbows. Perry plastic HYW English + French.

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Recruits

Recruits are the newly joined members of the Free People's armies. They are often young and usually unskilled. Perry plastic HYW English + French and one Victrix Roman head.
 

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Guardsmen

 

Guardsmen are soldiers trained and armed for figthing with larger two-handed weapons such as poleaxes, halberds and spears. Perry plastic HYW English + French.

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Templars

 

 

Templars are knights sworn to a religious order. They are elite warriors highly skilled in melee combat. They wear plate armour and carry two-handed weapons. 

These are out-of-the-box Perry HYW French knights. The symbol of their order is Sigmar's twin-tailed comet.

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Trackers

 

These specialist huntsmen are not warriors by trade, but they are skilled with a bow and useful to stay on track of the enemies of Order. They wear wild animal pelts and paint their faces to hide themselves in the woods. I used Victrix Ancient Roman heads and Perry medieval bodies and weapons.

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Eagelroc troops - these guys will serve as NPCs from the Free City of Eagelroc, which is completely reclaimed from Chaos, repopulated, and on the rise. Eagelroc sends soldiers to help with the cleanup of other lands, but also to pillage the ruins and bring the loot back home. These two soldiers happen to be duardin, but it's not a duardin-only city, there will be humans, too. These plastic dwarf minis were a lucky find, they fit well with my new collection and I can easily convert them with Perry bits (which I did here). They're from eM4. Not really the best material and casting, but I've seen much worse quality for higher prices than this. I'm really happy with these. 

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Hunald and Kottar, Lord Gereon's Men

These are two henchmen I made for an earlier scenario. My brother really liked them and wanted me to incorporate them into this collection so he can keep using them. They needed a bit of tweaking and a repaint, but here they are. They count as a Guardsman and a Crossbowman.

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We took the models for a spin a few weeks ago, in a skirmish with a couple friends who wanted to try tabletop wargames for the first time. We used our old favourite: the converted Malifaux 2E rules system; so we had to come up with profiles for all these unit types (and the Stormcast heroes leading them).