Miniature painting for toddlers

Recently I have given in to my son's continued pleas to paint one of 'daddy's figures'. I was in doubt when to start indoctrinating introducing him to the hobby. I thought I'd wait until he was around five. Then a good friend from the local hobby club told me his (almost) three year old daughter started her first foray into the hobby. I couldn't resist handing my son a (very cheap) brush, an abandoned Space Marine and a choice of colors. This is the result.

When to get started on the painting and gaming hobby? As soon as you're able to hold a brush!

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.

Day of the living Death Guard

My final four models from Nurgle's side of the Dark Imperium box have been painted. It took a day longer than planned as I completely forgot to sand the bases. In the caes of the Blight Drone I also cut a plastic barrel in half to make it a little more interesting. Anyway the command group featuring (from left to right) a Noxious Blightbringer, Lord of Contagion and Malignant Plaguecaster.

You to can get the full Nurgle treatment! Just call 555-Death-Guard and the nice men and women of our promotion team will be around!

Night of the Living Death Guard

Adhering to my schedule I've finished the unit of seven Death Guard from the Dark Imperium box set over the weekend. As with the Poxwalkers these models are beautifully modeled although to my taste some bits are too fragile for gaming. I'm not Atilla the Hun of painters but still two grenade tops broke off during painting and the green smoking incense stencher (center on the picture below) broke off during photography. That said I still think the unit looks fantastic and I can't wait to bring some plague and disease to the corrupt imperium and its corpse god.

"Death to the false...cough hack urgh blegh....emperor!" Perhaps I should call this unit the Charmers....oh dear I should've converted one into a banner bearer.

Dawn of the Nurgle Poxwalkers

This weekend the new Warhammer 40K was released and I have to admit I was rather excited about this one. In the footsteps of Age of Sigmar it promised a full overhaul of the rules. This past week I took in a lot of Warhammer TV shows (what a fascinating age we live in, Warhammer on tv) and I liked what I saw. The content of the boxed set: Truescale Primaris Space Marines and a band of the most interesting followers of Nurgle since the famous Palanquin of Nurgle was releases (a release I regretfully did not but at the time). My ambition for this getting started box is to get everything painted, preferably in a time scale measured in weeks or months, not years. I decided to start off with the Poxwalkers.

A horde of shuffling Poxwalkers shambles through the ruins of civilization, the new long night is closing in.

Skaven Stormfiends ready to join the fray

Wow I can't believe my first year blogging about this crazy hobby has come around. Time flies and all that. Perhaps I should've planned something interesting for the first anniversary...ah well next year (maybe). Today I finished my three Stormfiends, equiped for fire and close combat.

My team of Stormfiends is ready for battle. Finishing these three incidentally opens up the opportunity to start fielding the different Clan Skryre Battallions.

My Skaven army takes on a Von Carstein castle

My birthday came up and with my painting station filled with Highborn Aelfs and Grudge of Drong terrain I thought it was high time to buy myself a present at the local GW. I should've worn blinkers... Instead of getting the last few required Aelfs my eyes fell the Skaven releases I missed in the past few years. Pulling my attention back to this force. I hoped to get back to Grudge of Drong, but I have to interrupt with a short sidestep by presenting an overview of my Skaven Army as it stands today, with a bit of style by having them do a fictitious storming of a Von Carstein castle.

A Skaven horde: not the best view for any proud castle owner to wake up to.

A handful of happy Dwarves

With my rather massive sets of builds for Shadow Wars, ambitions to make a new warband for the game and of course my work on getting everything I need to play elves in the correct terrain for Grudge  of Drong it was high time for a 'Squirrel!' moment. The arrival of a band of Dwarves from Ral Partha provided just that. I joined a Kickstarter campaign to have these guys made, especially as there are Dwarf wizards in the set (still in basecoat over here) and a Dwarf on Ski's (greybeards will know why this is extra special). So between a massive built and paint I will blog about soon and another massive built I will blog about much later I started working on a bunch of Dwarves. These are the first four.

Cheers! Now let's go kill some Greenskins.

Finished the Spire of Dawn Aelfs

As I mentioned in my previous post, returning to Warhammer Fantasy at 8th edition was not a pleasant experience. As a result I never finished painting the High Elfs or Skaven in te box. I did paint a Dragon Lord as a fun project and a Dark Elf Sorceress because that miniature is awesome. But it took Age of Sigmar to get me fully back into the hobby. I focused on my old Skaven then got into Death and Destruction until finally landing on my old High Elfs or Aelfs as they are called now. Last week I decided to rebase the old miniatures and started painting the last unpainted unit from my box: the Lothern Sea Guard, now known as Spireguard. And with some pride I can report that they have been painted. Here is my small Aelf army as it stands.

The warriors of the Spire of Dawn (and friends) stand ready to defend it against the insidious Skaven.

Rebasing the Island of Blood to Spire of Dawn

The Island of Blood boxed set was released in 2010 to go along with Warhammer Fantasy Battles 8th edition. As I wanted to get back into fantasy to complement my 40K stuff I got the box (and a collector's edition of the 8th edition rulebook). I started off painting a Skaven clanrat. Then tried a few games in 8th and quickly dropped that idea. To each his own, but my experiences playing Warhammer Fantasy Battles 8th where not positive.

The Island of Blood set languished in the shed. As this was before I thought of project boxes the miniatures kind of spread out ending up in bits boxes, behind paint pots and beneath the workbench. When AoS launched I grabbed my ancient (1991) Skaven Army and had fun playing fantasy for the first time in (literally) decades. I quickly (it took a whole day (messy me)) cleaned out my work area in the shed and to my joy rediscovered my Skaven. These have all been painted and the Skaven half of a second IoB set joined the first.

A bunch of Kairic Acolytes join the warband

Aside from the project boxes I mentioned earlier on my blog I also have project trays. These are actually just box lids that contain models I'm currently working on (or that I'm planning to work on). On one of these were twenty Kairic Acolytes. I finished ten of them about a week ago and this weekend I made myself sit down and finish the other ten. Here is the glorious unit of twenty ready to wreak havoc on the battlefield (or more likely die in horrible squishy ways).

Hi would you like to join our cult? We offer a free gym membership to every acolyte!

The Siege of Fictitia

To celebrate the fact that I finished my new siege towers, I placed my Realm of Battle board outside, took some old Morheim terrain and a city wall out of their storage containers and made a little display I dubbed 'the Siege of Fictitia'. The ragtag defenders serve as a reminder that I really should build a full Order army somewhere this year. Let's not waste to much words and just go for a bunch of pictures now.

Here is a birds eye view of the final assault on Fictitia by the Warband of Malagor the Malicious, sorcerer lord of Tzeentch.

Stripping paint from plastic warhammer miniatures

Getting rid of a (bad) paint job on a Warhammer miniature is a universal wish. With metal miniatures it is easy. You toss them in a pot of aceton (or in the bad old days in paint thinner) let them soak for a day (or a week), grab a (hopefully old) toothbrush and start scrubbing. Dump model back in the aceton and repeat as needed. Stripping paint of metal is easy and I'm not going to waste more words on it. In this post I'm more interested in stripping paint of plastic models. As the wait for my order of a large tub (bathtub full) of Vallejo Sepia wash is slightly longer then expected I got a chance to try a new method of stripping paint of my plastic models.
(update with extra scrub at the end of the post)

Who will rid me of this turbulent paint job!

Chaos Spawn join the warband

The Chaos Spawn kit may not be the shiniest and newest in de Games Workshop collection, it is a barrel of fun to glue. You get two basic bodies and enough spare bits to mutate an entire Chaos Army. As I had two of the Spawn kits on the plastic pile I decided to just have some fun with it and build two generic failed champions and two Tzeentch themed monsters.

I tried following a How to paint Seraphon Feathers for the feathers on the Spawn's arms, but I'm no Duncan. I ended up splashing some Agrax Earthshade on the stained mess and now I try not thinking about it too much.  

Mass painting Tzeentch's Warriors of Chaos

I have to admit that I don't really love the Warriors of Chaos kit. The poses are stiff and your choice in assembling them is very limited. You basically choose between two hand-weapons or a hand weapon and shield without getting a chance to modify individual warriors. As the models are rather dense (from a design point) it is not very easy or obvious to make big changes. On the plus side this does allow for some very serious painting speeds if you combine the airbrush with the paintbrush. This unit of twenty Chaos Warriors was assembled and painted over the course of my weekeind.

I am rather happy with the color and design of my freehand banner. 

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.

Ebolax the Great marches for Rotwater Blight

With a last few finishing touches complete Ebolax the Great, sorcerer of Nurgle is ready to march to Rotwater Blight.

It's over there, everyone!

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