Finished my Nighthaunt (army)

My Nighthaunt army is finished. I had to keep focus over the course of this weekend and Monday night (and lost it on a few side projects), but I've managed it. This occasion marks one of the scarce moments I can say I painted every model I bought for an army (excepting one, but  the second Lord Executioner was part of a discount set and bought as conversion fodder so he doesn't count). Now this is what I call a nice start for the new year. Let's open up with a model that came out rather well due to a happy little accident.

Blood for the Blood God? I think not!

What I did during the Christmas holiday (spoiler alert: paint Nighthaunt)

Another year has past and I got so involved in enjoying a holiday I actually forgot to blog the easy and obligatory years retrospective. Maybe I'll get away with it later this month (or maybe not). For now it is time to wax lyrical about my (almost finished) shiny new Nighthaunt army. Lets start with one of my favorite modern miniatures.

Sometimes you just need to give into the urge to add blood...

Nighthaunt slightly delayed by grandfather Nurgle

It has been way too quiet on my blog this past month and  I blame dear old grandfather Nurgle. He kindly blessed me with a bad case of the flue. As a self employed madman professional I had to switch to a slightly higher gear to catch up with unfinished work after that. Nurgle aside, I also spent way too much time testing out this newfangled Elite Dangerous game. I played this game rather fanatically in the eighties and now they seem to have added textured the wireframes (and added some other stuff*). Luckily Fallout 76 turns out to be a bits of wood and metal collection simulator, so I get to use my hobby time elsewhere**. That in turns mean I found the time to finish five Chainrasps. That makes the production of a new army official. Here's a group shot of the five with some other models that accidentally fall within the range (and mostly have nothing to do with the army I'm working on).

* a lot of other stuff...
** note to self: don't ever pre-order games again...

I had to re-glue the Spirit Hosts in the back (left) for the tenth or so time just to fit them into this picture. I don't think I'll be using them on a tabletop, it will cost me too much glue ;)

Freezing green stuff

I made the joyous mistake of purchasing a new computer game called Subnautica. Set in a science fiction background you take the role of a lone survivor crash landed on an ocean world. It basically combines survival games with a fascinating storyline. All well and good, but it does take a humongous bite out of my painting time. So a bit of a boring update this week as I waste my spare time swimming in a fictitious ocean. Green stuff, also known as Kneadite, we all know it and (some of us) love it. I buy mine in 36 inch rolls through an e-bay trader called Trolltrader. Unfortunately Green Stuff has a shelf life and with my limited sculpting ability it usually starts going a bit tough around the time I'm halfway through a roll. As tough a the forgotten (and right up there with 'sand' overpriced) pack of Green Stuff at your local GW. I usually turn my green stuff into sand bags when it starts to go. With the arrival of a new supply I thought 'time for an experiment'.

I should not have basecoated buildings quite so close to my ruler...

Tutorial: building a ruined bridge base

Yesterday I completed my Orruk Warboss on Wyvern that included the fancy base you can see below. It is supposed to look like a ruined bridge or highway (or something similar). As it was rather easy and fun to build I thought people might like a tutorial on this. Luckily I actually remembered to take some pictures while scratch-building.

Never mind true line of sight and hiding behind terrain: a big model needs a big base, it just looks right.

I'll mark those Termagants, Hormagaunts and Spore Mines down as finished

In theory the holidays should be a perfect time to get some painting work done. In practice however...As a freelancer I get rather a lot of extra work over the summer severely reducing my hobby time. With a possible move up in housing in the future well time has been a bit limited. I did however find a few hours over the past weeks to finish painting my 'Gants, 'Gaunts and Spore Mines.

Not the best paint job ever, but it serves.

The rise of the Genestealer Cult (with some fancy basing work (in progress))

With only a few new snap-fit Death Guard on the horizon and the codex announced for somewhere later this year there is room to complete one of my other open projects....or I could just start a new one! Squirrel! I love Genestealer Cults. When they where first introduced (at least to me) in the back story of the original Space Hulk (Suicide Mission) they where intriguing. But what blew me (and many others if the Oldhammer Group is a guideline) away where the limousines introduced with a heavily converted (and part scratch built) Genestealer Cult that appeared in White Dwarf 124 (1991). Finding no decent pictures on the internet I took my copy out of storage to snap a quick (hopefully crisper) picture. More can be read on these models on the Eldritch Epistles blog here and a few snaps are available on the venerable Realm of Chaos 80s blog here.

The original (Khorne worshipping) Genestealer Cult that got me hooked to their background.

Scratch building the Grudge of Drong Bierlager

In between taking a brush to my High Elves and giving them a few test rides with the Age of Sigmar ruleset I've been working on the buildings needed for the Grudge of Drong campaign. This campaign is (I just read) notable for being the last to feature cardboard buildings to use with the scenario's. But why use cardboard when you can scratch build. Over the past few weeks I've been learning how not to use my new polystyrene cutting tools by attempting Das Bierlager (my guide to building the buildings is in German, it enhances the appeal of Dwarves immeasurably in my opinion). Here's a quick list of things I've learned the hard way about polystyrene cutting:

• Make sure the angle between two walls is 90 degrees before cutting the lot, 100+ degree angles lead to very strange geometry (unusable buildings unless you're a great old one).
• Put the texture on the walls before cutting the 90 degree corners, <1 mm polystyrene is not known as 'the strongest material in the world' for a reason.
• Don't glue with PVA glue, it dries way too slow, use transparant 'everything' glue (just as with foamboard).
• Don't push cocktail sticks in neatly cut polystyrene buildings, it makes the walls crack.
• Check your supply of 1mm cardboard, you may have just used all of it to make tiles for Armageddon buildings...

So there was a bit of a learning curve here. In the end my first building is standing (almost fully) primed and ready for paint. 

Front side of Das Bierlager, I wonder what the top floor is used for...

Khorgos Khul, mighty lord of Khorne

Sometimes I need a quick break from one project to start a new one. At other times (better times?) I use the need to take a break to quickly pick up a project I left (years) earlier. In this case I left the ink on my siege towers to dry. picked up Khorgos Khul and bravely tried to follow Duncan's example of how to paint him. I'm not Duncan, but I'm still pretty pleased with how he turned out.

He's mighty, he's a lord and he has a gigantic skull rune on his back, he must be a mighty lord of Khorne!

I think the models in the Age of Sigmar starter set (and most models that have been produced in the past few years) are awesome. But painting them is turning out to be harder then I expected. Maybe it is all the detail that is there waiting to be screwed up by me, but it is giving me trouble. Still I will not be ashamed if I put this guy on the tabletop. I'm especially happy with the evil eyes on Grizzlemaw (the Flesh Hound). The old paint white first, yellow second rule still applies there.

I Duncan'ed the hell out of that yellow stripe on his back (well I tried to).

I started painting this model the week after the Age of Sigmar Starter Set came out. I was just trying some new things with my airbrush and discovered just how much paint you can accidentally apply to a miniature. I also learned that you should not try to fix too much airbrushed paint by 'wetblend airbrushing' another color on it. To spare you (or myself the telling of) a lot of embarrassing mistakes it was a mess drowned in paint.

Hide the keys to the blood bank! A Mighty Lord of Khorne approaches!

Khorgos spent the last few years on 'to do trays' in project boxes and for a while discarded on my workbench ready to be thrown into the trashcan. That was until I decided to test a new paint stripper and write a blog about stripping paint from miniatures. If you look at the last picture of that post, you can see Khorgos's cloak on the same tissue as the Tree Lord. I had to reassemble to model, discovered his 'kinky handcuffs' have gone missing and had to pin and reattach his axe. I also had to green stuff a rather big gap on the right shoulder (his right) of the cloak.

Now to paint the rest of his friends....

The base is a story in and of itself. I was planning to make lava bases for my Khorne host, but it turned out te be a bad idea. Lava is orange/white and the base of my Khorgorath did not give a proper contrast to the model. As I had already pre-textured all the bases for my Khorne characters I had to do something with it. I decided to go for a filthy shallow stream. This give me an excuse to paint it green which makes for amazing contrast with the red armor. I added some Vallejo water paste to  the textured and painted stream for even more watery effectiveness.

All in all, I'm rather happy with the result and glad I did not bin this champion. Now back to the siege towers....

Basing your miniatures for Age of Sigmar and Warhammer 40K

A nice base makes your miniatures look cool and can be used to tie your army together visually. Now you can hop over to GW and get some texture paint (and that is fine), but I prefer to go a bit further. I do this for three reasons:

1. It looks cool.
2. It gives me a chance to practice modelling.
3. It gives purpose to excess bits.

Not featured: Lord Harkon (excepting his feet).

Quick quick send more Skryre and Moulder war machines will send many many warp tokens

While working on a project I tend to get distracted by the next one in line (lets talk about dwarves....oh no later after my Dark Elves...shut up now!). Age of Sigmar divides the forces in four alliances making distraction easier to deal with, after all Skaven are Chaos too so it does not really count as a full distraction ;)

Skaven Skryre war machines, Moulder Rat Oggors and an actual member of the council of thirteen. My army is growing in strength.

Lord Slimegulp, Tyrant of the Wastes, Daemon Price of Nurgle (and some friends)

The second model for my Nurgle warband will be Lord Slimegulp the self-proclaimed Tyrant of the Wastes. He is a Daemon Price of Nurgle that I'm building out of bits and a second hand plastic daemon prince I bought as part of one of those 'I quit the hobby' lots. The front of the model has been build by cutting leftover bits from the cannibalized Maggot Lord set I used for the Nurgle Realmgate earlier this year.

Lord Simegulp always gets a close-up view of the meals he's chewing on. I bet they never mentioned that possibility in the Join a Merry Nurgle Warband recruitment flyers.

All praises to Nurgle, our grandfather of plagues, here are the Blight Kings

I have been meaning to build a chaos army for quite some time now. Having grown up with the Realm of Chaos books I know nothing offers quite as much opportunities for wild conversions and interesting riotous units.

What has delayed me for all this time was an inability to decide on my chosen power to worship. I have a few older metal models for Khorne, Slaanesh, Nurgle and Tzeentch. And as a temporary fix I painted up an old school pantheon a few years back:

The great four powers of Chaos band together to destroy La Maisontaal

Sylvaneth realmgate construction

Almost no time to paint this weekend as I had to construct a second realmgate for the upcoming campaign and time is short. I had a free hand (and a lot of plastic Citadel trees) although the concept of a giant tree was given as a starting point. For the curious after the first stage it looked like this.

More leaves were added later on.

Realmgate to the Garden of Nurgle

The local Warhammer store has asked me to build some extra terrain for the grand Games Workshop campaign this summer. I don't have a lot of information to go on other than that the campaign is set in Ghyran, the realm of life. I have been asked to build two Realmgates, one for Nurgle and one with a Sylvaneth team. I'll also be repainting (or re-using) some of the store's older terrain and I get to use a few brand new kits to hack to pieces. Always a nice bonus. For my first Realmgate I decided to go for Nurgle. Time being a bit short I used the Realmgate Wars Battle Tome for inspiration and then started building. I want this Realmgate to have a diseased theme (of course) and give it a completely corrupted by daemons look. You should not want to get near it. I started out with the old base of a Witchfate Tor. I made an MDF base and added a 4cm layer of polystyrene to get some extra height. The Realm Gate has to be imposing!

The work space looks relatively clean, it must be the start of a new project!

Making MDF bases for terrain and green stuff details

So enough time has been spent daydreaming and planning. This week I actually started on the build. Step #1 sculpting some gravestones over lunch because my castle will need to be surrounded by a large (huge) graveyard.

Building a Warhammer 40K Tactica Control

After completing my Plasma Generator I was planning to go back to Sketchup and design the next building. But as all my hobby stuff was just lying around anyway and I only had little bits of foamboard left, I decided to just start cutting and gluing and see where I would end up. I started out with a picture of the Tactica Control from Dawn of War.

So I replicated the support pieces and tried some different angles to see if I could space the building correctly.