The muster is called, the host assembles, and the peasants showed up as well!

After reappearing with a shameless plug for my first book, it's about time I got back to writing about slapping paint on unsuspecting miniatures. Writing, to be sure! I have not been sitting on my hands for the past months—quite the opposite: I have a finished projects backlog to write about. This is a marked contrast with my usual the pile of shame too unfinished to write about. Anyway, on to a lot of painted miniatures (not all at once). Here's my completely finished (cough—not quite—cough) Bretonnian muster.

If they had a mighty keep inside the Mighty Fortress, they wouldn't need tents to sleep in.

 

Guards! Knights! Squires! Prepare for battle!

Over the past few months I've been painting models for my Bretonnian army. I never got around to posting finished models due to a lack of tufts and the ambition to make a flock box (it failed). Today I decided to just grab ready made tufts and finish and photograph a whole bunch of models at once. Here's (most of) the planned core of my army, consisting of ten Mounted Knights of the Realm, a Paladin bearing the Battle Standard of Mousillon, Duke Maldred of Mousillon on his Royal Pegasus and his illegitimate daughter Malory leading the first cavalry wedge with her duelists' blades drawn and her visor open. 

O Fortuna
Velut Luna
Statu variabilis

Night Goblins Attack Giant (or is that Night Goblin's Attack Giant?)

It is so lovely to return to obsessive relaxed miniature painting after a bit of a hiatus. With my Bretonnians sort of lurking in the background and my Dwarves finished (and already beaten quite badly on the tabletop), I couldn't resist adding a third project to the 'active' list: Night Goblins...well Greenskins, but I decided to start with Night Goblins. And not just any Night Goblins, but a Night Goblin War Giant (war would've made the headline less confusing, too bad you can't change what you type on the internet ;). Here's the model.

I hear you knocking but you can't come in...oh wait scratch that it seems that you CAN come in. How about still going for tomorrow night and trying again?

Dwarf Gyrocopters join the throng

I believe that the odds of arriving late increase with your proximity to work or school. In the same vein: the less you have to paint to finish an army, the greater the chance it'll never get done (yes there's a Catch 22 there ;). With that in mind, I forced myself to finish the final two Gyrocopters I needed to complete my Dwarven throng. Well okay, I painted three, because for some odd reason I printed three of the things.

Hojotoho! Hojotoho!

I finally got around to painting again (and actually writing about it)

I can't believe I managed to fall of the edge of a globe! Luckily I dropped back onto the surface and painted some miniatures along the way. What is that you say? No edges on globes? Okay, in all honesty: work managed to eat up most of my time and I had to overcome a raging addiction to Satisfactory along the way too. But over the holidays I managed to get some hobby done. As I turned the space underneath my paint station into a GW store facsimile I'll be forced to paint even more in the foreseeable future if I want my legspace back. In other words: more updates will follow soon. But for now, and without further ado, lets pretend I never fell of the globe and show what I painted over the past few weeks. 

Painting skin with purple glazes is a lot of fun and produces nice results (I think). It also makes me hum  the tune of Purple Haze, but that's just me being annoying. 

Kruleboyz Snatchaboss on Sludgeraker Beast and Marshcrawla Sloggoth

Over the weekend I finished a Kruleboyz Snatchaboss on Sludgeraker Beast and a Marshcrawla Sloggoth. That's a lot of words to describe two models. Don't the good folks at GW take blog headlines into account when naming their creatures? Snide comments aside, these two (and the vulture) sold me on the Krulebozy faction for AoS so it is quite a pleasure to have them painted up and ready for battle. 

As far as I'm concerned the Marshcrawla Sloggoth beats good old, fat Grom the Paunch and even the ancient Goblin King's Chariot when it comes to chariot design. 

Kruleboyz Corpse-rippa Vulcha with riders (to be honest I wanted to go with Squak! as a title, but thought It'd be a bit too short...)

As mentioned in the previous post I've finished a Kruleboyz Corpse-rippa Vulcha (or big bird, as I call him) as well as both its riders. Let's start off with the bird carrying Gobsprakk, Mouth of Mork. Or 'mage on big bird'. This is a rather powerful, named character, shaman-type that sort of binds all the different Kruleboyz groups together (in the grand narrative of things). He also looks like particularly cantankerous for an Orc. 

"Could you stand still please? I promised my pet canary a treat..." 

Sword Masters of Hoeth or Vanari Bladelords? You decide!

New High Elf Lumineth models keep pouring out of GW, and my brand new army book has been rendered obsolete faster than actual play was possible. A new record. Anyway, with the new wave of models a unit called Vanari Bladelords has appeared. I have to admit I'm rather enamored by the new models, but I did have these Sword Masters of Hoeth on the paint station already. So I painted them up anyway. Bladelords or Sword Masters, they've been painted and that's what really counts.

"What are we?" 
"Sword Masters!" "Bladmasters!"
"No Sword Masters!!!" "No not at all!!!!" 
"Just shut up and wave your blades around like you mean it!!!"

Lumineth Realm-Lords Vanari Dawn Riders, Auralan Wardens and classic High-Elves

My last post ended with five Vanari Dawn Riders slowly sinking into the Biostrip-dip. This post, I'm can happily report the same five have been scrubbed, cleaned, primed and painted in more proper colors. I'll start with their new paint job and then give you an overview of a bunch of my new Lumineth models as well as some older High Elf models kicking around in my cabinets. With another unit currently on the paint station I most definitely am in a Asur Lumineth state of mind. 

The sheltering shade of the forest calling come in silence. Accompanied only by the full moon howling of a night wolf....

Skaven warlord on brood horror and some classic Plague Monks

I should've known the Gutter Runners where just a vanguard heralding more Skaven to come. That and the new Battle Tome. It restores the Skaven to their own backstabbing and conniving version of unity. I love it. I haven't had time to get a game in with my Skaven, but just seeing all the clans back together is a treat in itself. Over the course of this weekend I focused on finishing two units that had been getting some on and off again attention over the past few weeks. The first unit is a Skaven warlord on Brood Horror by Forge World and the second is a group of twenty classic Plague Monks. Lets start off with the Warlord, I should say Clawlord on Brood Horror (although Forge World hasn't updated the warscroll just yet).

Now there is someone I wouldn't want to invite over for dinner.

Orruk Boar Boyz arrive just in time for Orctober

For a second I was worried that I did not pay enough attention to orcs/orruks this Orctober (Orruktober?). But a quick scroll through the past month shows I need not have worried. I did complete Grom (honorary orc) and had some fun with orcs in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4th. Now all I needed to do to complete Orctober was to finish painting some actual Orruk/Orc/Ork (this is getting out of hand) models. Luckily two projects have been hiding on my painting station: Kaptin Badrukk and five Boarboys I picked up second hand a while back. This weekend I completed the Boarboys.

Oh what a day. What a lovely day! 

Start of my freeguild: Demigryph Wolf Knights and an Ironweld Canon

For as long as I've played Warhammer I've wanted to have my very own army of fragile fools humans. The amount of painted models required, an incapability to paint skin tone and no idea where to start always stopped me. Well the skin tone bit got solved years ago by painting lots of skin tones. My output is rather high, so I don't feel too daunted by the prospect of painting a lot of miniatures. So all that stopped me is where to start. Well I solved that creatively. Here's a shot of part of the solution.

Now these are serious Knights of the (Summer) Wolf.

Operation Dead-Pile in progress, Necromancer and Grave Guard finished

As far as I know every hobbyist has his own lead-pile or plastic heap: the collection of cool models that just had to be bought, but haven't been painted yet. Recently I started noticing a related phenomenon. I have an ever growing collection of models halfway through a paintjob that subsequently never got finished. Now the lead-pile will be there (and grow) forever, but I think this dead-pile can be rectified (and if not, I'll have a bunch more models painted so its one of those win-win type situations). I've called this new activity Operation Dead-Pile, mostly because I was really stumped for a title to this post (ssssh don't tell anyone). Between my regular painting (currently enjoying old Empire Freeguild models) I'll just grab a unit or model that is languishing with a basecoat and some colors blocked in and finish the thing of (quality be damned!)

The trick to finishing toy soldiers is occasionally just forcing yourself to sit down and do the work. Oh no, forced fun, life is hard ;)

My first Orruk Boar Chariot rides eternal, shiny and chrome

As my local GW organised a small AoS tournament I had no time to paint on Saturday. I did have a chance on Sunday to finish the crew for the first of (hopefully five) painted Orruk Boar Chariots.

One stick to poke the boars, one stick to find them.

Restoring Orc Boar Chariots, Pink Spiderfang Grots and more Orruks and Grots

Two weeks ago I decided to paint myself out of my painting slump by assembling, fancy basing and painting Skarbrand. With my painting mojo renewed, I went on to open my Orcs&Goblins...I mean Orruks and Grots project box to make a dent in that back-log. Having successfully taken over the dining room table with hobby I've been able to get quite a nice few painting and modeling hours in. To spice the hobby up a bit further I've also lifted my personal (semi-)ban on going for multiple units at the same time. Basically I'm chaos incarnate, doing whatever fancy dictates and having a blast while at it. First off I finished painting the ten remaining Spiderfang Grots that where languishing half-painted in the project box.

Spiders! Attack!!!

The five horseman of the Tzeentchpocalypse

I hate painting cavalry. No clue what it is, but for some reason I'm always annoyed while painting cavalry models. These five Chaos Knights are excellent models and I love how they turned out, but even here I still hated every minute of painting them.

By the last breath of the fourth fifth winds blow....

Enchanting death from above

This weekend I finished a Chaos Sorcerer Lord on Manticore. The regular Chaos Lord is still somewhere on my paint station, but I guess he'll just have to wait a bit.

I should not have called my Manticore Simba, now I dare not get off for fear of revenge.

Spiders, spiders everywhere!

I have a hard to shake habit of buying unwanted lots of Warhammer miniatures of second hand websites. A result of this is that I have two full sets of the Battle For Skull Pass, the Warhammer Fantasy Battles starter set for 7th edition. This set contained ten Goblin Spider Riders each making me the proud owner of twenty Grot Spider Riders.

No giggling! Our spiders are decidedly poisonous.

Azhag the Slaughterer is ready to despoil the Mortal Realms

While working on my Age of Sigmar terrain I spotted Azhags dragon standing alone, forgotten and abandoned between some tools in the hobby shed. I started on this model and never got around to finishing it. So over the course of this weekend I painted Azhag himself, finished up the dragon and put some color to the banners. It does fit nicely with my other rediscovered Orc and Goblin models.

Watch it, Azhag is ready to despoil the Realms.

Moonclan goblin squig hoppers attack! (AKA how to fix hobby fatigue)

I spend the last month working on a variety of chaos models, especially my Silver Tower set when suddenly the dreaded hobby fatigue set in. For me it is that point where the time needed to finish a painting project seems like real work instead of a hobby and I just don't feel like it anymore. I still completed the Grot Scuttlings but the results where poor enough to put the project on a temporary hold. So how do you fix hobby fatigue?

Add DJ Silverado's Boing song here....