Building and painting my Mighty Fortress (and about time too)

Way back in 1988 (when people still yelled at me to get off their lawn instead of vice versa) the Warhammer Siege expansion appeared for Warhammer Fantasy Battle. This 140 page book has rules for everything you'd ever want to do to take or hold fortifications. Alongside the book GW released a new terrain kit called Mighty Fortress. This is a polystyrene set of towers and walls to use in games of siege (and general battles of course). I got my hands on one almost thirty years ago. As it (often) goes with miniature (related) purchases it did not get painted as quick as I imagined when I got it. Long story short: just before Christmas last year (2018) I got this box out of the to-do pile and started planning.

The Mighty Fortress came in a big pretty box that has been sitting around looking big and pretty for long enough now.

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 ;)

Trouble in Teufeltal session six, Steam Tank Rally

After fighting an Orc Shaman and freeing Otilla the group decided to take it up a notch. They planned to rescue the girls studying at DeBlanc's School for Ladies, recruit the wizard Dieter von Heinz and convince the knights at the White Wolf lodge to join the defense of Schluesselschloss.

Only now do I realize I missed a perfect chance to add some chariots to the spectacle.

Skaven Moulder Packmaster

As (hobby wise) I have been a bit pre-occupied with computer games lately, I did not get a chance to practice my painting skills. This weekend I suffered through the lousy ending of Kingdom Come: Deliverance and found myself with the time to start painting again, but where to start? A while back I was lucky enough to get some free left over miniatures from a friend at the local gaming club. One of them was this Skaven Packmaster from Clan Moulder.

That way!

Demonstrating wargaming at Spellenspektakel 2018

Eindhoven has a yearly recurring gaming convention called Spellenspektakel and this year we had a chance to attend with the Sword Brethren Eindhoven, our local wargaming club. As the audience sometimes wants to participate in games we split our gaming table, using one half for Warhammer 40K Kill Team and the other to play Age of Sigmar Skirmish. One of the wonderful moment was explaining the games to the smaller kids attending our table (with a few heart attacks along the way as the models got handled ;) ). In the end I think this look says it all: hooked for life.

Used with permission, (c) Judith Tielemans