I’ve had this box set sitting around for a while and could feel the weight of shame upon me… build ’em and paint ’em boy! These are tricky miniatures both to build and paint. Cawl I am pleased with – I built him in sections and stuck him together after painting him and mostly I got it right. Celestine and the gemini are much harder than they look and close-ups really show where my painting skills need more work, but apart from Celestine’s wings they look ok on the tabletop. The Inquisitor was a pleasure and I’ve aimed for simplicity with her, and it helps! Lovely models all round, but the detail makes them very tricky for fat-handed monkeys like me to get right.
Well, I may have been silent for a few months, but I have been painting occasionally. I just haven’t been taking photos of my completed miniatures. This has now been rectified and so over the next few days I’ll be updating a selection of badly but enthusiastically painted miniatures with my comments on same.
Things are still mostly shit here. Seven months on I am having to admit that we are now a household with two sufferers of chronic conditions, and that there is not much we can do about that. I am trying to face this stoically but its still worrying, and I’m worried and sad and angry most of the time.
So here we are then, in Orktober, the orkiest time of year. This Orktober I am renovating an old battlewagon, but I have an even bigger Orky achievement to celebrate too. I have finished the Warboss’s Retinue for Waaagh! Uzbog, which means that I have a complete and list-legal Rogue Trader Ork Army! Uzbog, his Retinue Nobz, and the Bigmob were all featured in earlier posts, so this time I will put up just pictures of the retinue.
The final additions to Waargh! Uzbog
Oddboyz Retinue: Mekboy Snagagrot (flak, bolt pistol, hand weapon; kustom weapon – kustom special – heavy bolter +1 to hit +8″ range D10 damage; power fist), Krusader robot; Painboy Dok Wortbad (flak, boltpistol, hand weapon; bionik bitz x 2 – legs: tracks, doks surprise – steel hornz),2 x dreadnoughts; Weirdboy Badskab plus minderz (flak, bolters, handweapon, force field – konverter, bionik bit – boltpistol hand); Weirdboy Gorslag plus minders (flak, bolters, handweapons, force field – deflektor, bionik bit: axe hand); Runtherd Gutgrim (flak, boltpistol, hand weapon; bionik bit – melta hand); 5x grots – handweapon); squig catapult; hop splat gun. 600 points.
The final thing I’ve finished recently is another squad of obsolete marines for the Steel Guard. Apparently Assault Squads are completely pointless in 8th edition because there are flying primaris marines who are much better. I expect the same to be the case in 9th, but if oldhammer is about anything its about playing for the love of the game and not picking your team based upon a complex series of equations most guaruanteed to deliver victory. I hope to play more games of 9th edition than I did of 8th (i.e. five or more games), but I reserve the right to throw an assault squad onto the table if I feel like it.
The highlight in this squad is that Ive slipped in a christmas marine, as I felt that his wobbly stance would work as a landing pose. You will probably agree that is doesn’t particularly, but that’s life. Sergeant Plaid is a Space Crusade sergeant whose fat power glove should have been painted as a foam fist really. Next time!
This is the second of the three pieces I’ve finished since March, an experiment that failed. Having painted a Night Lord next up on my journey through the Chaos Legions was World Eaters. Now the World Eaters started out as the Warhounds, and were blue-grey and white. When Angron took over he called them the World Eaters and reversed their colours. When Khorne took him over their colours gradully migrated to the red and brass we know today. So I thought that I’d paint a squad of each!
Hunea’s squad were based a long way from the rest of the Warhounds on garrison duty in a distant stronghold, with irregular updates by astropath. They followed at a distance the change from Warhounds to World Eaters, the butcher’s nails, the rebellion. They were able to hear the Legion break down into madness and bloodlust but not be part of it. Finally there were no more astropathic transmissions, the galaxy was at war, and the squad had to decide which side they were on. They decided that no-one cared for them so they cared for no-one, and started to carve out a petty empire for themselves on the edges of known space. After the heresy came the Scouring, and Hunea and his gang fled in the face of overwhelming Imperial retribution. They tried to use a warp storm to hide in and wound up in the Maelstrom where they made a base which they used to raid the Imperium and in which they gradually succumbed to the lure of chaos. They act as sell-swords and security detail for lesser chaos warlords in the Maelstrom, and are mostly trying to avoid notice by bigger fish like Huron Blackheart!
I didn’t enjoy painting Hunea’s squad that much, it felt like I was fighting the minis’ natural ‘feel’; a colour scheme that works for the clean lines of loyalists doesn’t work very well for the complex lines of chaos marines. It felt like I was forcing the paintjob. One of the plastic marines was one from a parts lot that had been stripped but was very badly built. I should have just chucked it in the bitz box and used a different marine instead of trying to repair and reuse it, it looks crap! But you live and learn, innit.
Well, hasn’t it been a while! What a few months its been. Some people have had a chance during lockdown to paint and paint and paint but sadly I am not one of them. My partner came down with a light case of covid in March which wasn’t too bad, but it turns out that covid can have knock on effects in many different ways. She’s been suffering a variety of symptoms including fatigue ever since, and so I’ve had to do everything in our household. Its not been easy, caring for her, looking after two dogs, and trying to keep the household functioning at a basic level – I’m the disabled one and she’s the powerhouse in our relationship. We’ve had no real income, I can only work part-time and don’t earn enough each year to even pay any tax. We dont know anyone else in this country and haven’t seen any of our family or friends since Christmas. So its been a challenge and there hasnt been a lot of time for painting toy mans. But I’ve found time here and there, because you need to take care of yourself, and it doesn’t matter what your limits are, how resilient you are, whether you’re weak or strong or whatever you want to call it, you need to spend some time looking after yourself or you will be no use to the people you need to care for.
Obsidius here is from Blackstrone Fortress and whilst he’s a Black Legion chappy in the game I painted him as a Night Lord because I’ve been working my way through the Chaos Legions over the last few years and Night Lords are where I’m up to.
Lovely miniature, fairly pleased with the paintjob, but there’s not a lot to say about him. I resolved not to buy any more minis until I’ve painted Blackstone Fortress and a Chaos Knight, but that might be tested by Indomitus….
Last one from me for a while… plenty more on the painting desk waiting to be finished. Some time ago I backed Midgard’s Village of the Witches Kickstarter, though I can’t remember what it was that I particularly wanted. I think that I felt a box of assorted witches would come in useful in some project or other, which is as good as reason to buy minis as I’ve ever found. These were part of it, there is a witch model to match each of these ladies. It felt like a nice change of direction so I got to work. Again, most of this is contrast paint over gloss white primer. When all this is over (will it ever be over, or have we just fallen into the quasi-fascist dystopia we’ve been expecting all our lives) I must get some Grey Seer and see how that goes. Some of these ladies I really enjoyed, but the posh one I struggled with. Finally the Witchfinder also suffered the ravages of the chaos puppy so he’ll go for stripping and maybe become part of another project. Oh yeah, finally part deux, I’m going to play my first game of D&D tonight… I’m anxious in case I’m crap at it! Seriously need this brain to give it a rest ffs… Thanks for reading, stay safe and take care of each other!
Another completed set. Now, fourteen months after purchasing it, I have completed the Kill Team: Rogue Trader set… not that I ever play it, but these are lovely miniatures. I mostly enjoyed painting them, although I had a few moments of crisis along the way… in the end Vayne turned out well, nothing was a write off, and I learnt from the experience… mostly I learned that my finished miniatures shelf wasn’t as safe and secure as I’d thought… one of the Starstriders fell in action to a puppy of chaos… (I also painted the canid so its markings matched those of my first dog…)
Thinking about it now I probably should have turned this lad into a daemon prince or something like that, but its always nice to have a giant around in case you need anyone stepped on. Giant Hayhouse is a mid-period Warhammer miniature, and area that is usually out of the scope of my interest but he came to me as part of a joblot so why not eh? More contrast practise on this lad, I’m feeling my more confident about them now. Should have given him a coat of varnish though…
Its been a funny few months hasn’t it? At the end of January we got another dog, a puppy to be a friend to our traumatised whippet. We brought a charming little lurcher puppy into our household, and we’ve had two months of stress since then as we’ve all had to learn about the new format of the family unit and how we fit together. There have been a lot of days when I’ve said to myself,if I find it this hard caring for a puppy then I am not going to manage kids…; plenty of times when I’ve wondered if we haven’t taken a household of two happy adults and one happy dog and made a household of four unhappy creatures; and times when I’ve disappointed myself at my own failings. In amongst all this there hasn’t been a lot of time for painting. I’ve barely been outside for two months! So pandemic and lockdown hasn’t made a lot of difference to my day-to-day life! Its still mostly about ensuring the needs of my doggies are met… things are much calmer now, the dogs are friends, we’re not house-trained yet (70 days and counting, but to be fair to her she spent the first four months of her life living in a barn and pissing where she liked, so its kind of engrained), and the biggest hit is that our dog socialisation has had to go our of the window and we’re worried that she’ll pick up insanity from him rather than him picking up sanity from her…
I don’t normally write about my life because its not really very interesting, but I wanted to give some context to my work. and the pictures I post over the next day or two. I hope everyone is staying safe and being sensible to protect themselves and their loved ones.
Warboss Uzbog, featured a few posts back, already had a Big Mob, and so he needs a retinue. This post will show off his retinue nobz, and their custom battlewagon. I enjoyed building and painting the battlewagon particularly, I was influenced by a piece in Fantasy Miniatures. That guy’s work is far better than mine but I hope that the spirit of Orkish kustomisation is with me too.
Uzbog’s retinue nobz
Uzbog’s nobz in their kustom battlewagon… 280 points of orks
