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
Hello again and welcome to 2020. Since my last post its been Christmas and New Year, and then we’ve done something silly and got ourselves a new puppy. I’ve not had a lot of painting time since then 😦 She’s lovely though.
Now, the two main points of “interest” with this warband were 1) further experimentation with contrast paints; and 2) painting a random selection of miniatures in the way that I did when I was a kid! Point 2 needs no explanation, but point 1 maybe does. I followed some intructions for painting with source lighting from above. So I sprayed these minis black all over, then gave a grey spray from above, and then a white spray from above. I was hoping that the white would help the colours to pop out, as if there was a strong sun above – this warband is wandering parched chaos wastes. I think I’ve had mixed success. Mostly the source lighting failed and I don’t really know why. Likewise where it worked I don’t know why it worked. Was it my choice of colours or paint? Why are the mutants so dull whilst the Warqueen looks great? Still, I think I’ve learned a few things and I’ve painted some lovely miniatures. I really enjoyed painting the Warqueen – one problem with the beautiful modern minis GW is churning out at the moment is that they are so very detailed that it is hard for us mediocre painters to do anything with them. This one has just the right amount of stuff on it, a challenge but not impossible. The chap with the warhammer was fun too…. his tab just says OLDHAMMER but I can’t remember getting him. The chaos toilet was great, I really enjoyed painting it but I think that I could have done a lot better. The zombie ninja was fun too and simple. I messed up the shaman lady, I should have used different colours. The chaos warriors were tricky, I am not pleased with any of them really. The not-chaosette was a nightmare to paint, lots of faint detail, hard to get any of it right. The rhino-monster I enjoyed and I felt like I got the tattoos right too. In true chaos style, even the paineous bits were a pleasure!
There are bad things going on in Warmington-on-Sea… a few years ago I picked up a box of Warlord Games’ Dad’s Army miniatures for their Bolt Action game. I was going to turn them into an Imperial Guard platoon, but this was a lot more fun…
Just a quick update before I get to some juicy stuff later… Brother Russkikh is a lovely old Rogue Trader Chaplain which has some fantastic details on it but a horrible helmet. I did the best I could with the face but it doesn’t look very skull-like. I have to say that it looks better in the metal, as it were. The picture here is not very flattering at all! Oh well, its hardly spoiling my chances of getting called up for an invitational 😀
You know how it goes, you have so many projects going on that none of them ever seem to get anywhere… so it has been with my Ork Freebooter army. In order to field a valid Freebooter army I need a warboss, retinue, and big mob to attach all the Freebooterz to. I did the big mob some time ago… https://leadmess.com/2016/07/02/waargh-dakka-dakka-its-grimsniks-ouseold-boyz/ so maybe I should get a shift on… therefore, here I present Wazgut Uzbog, Bad Moon Warboss. Wazgut is only a minor warboss at the moment, but he has some grand ideas, if only he had the boyz! So he’s spending teef like there’s no tomorrow in the hope of carving out a decent Empire for himself and winning some good scraps at the head of an army of freaks and outcasts…
The miniature is, I think, from Knightmare. The sculptor has really caught the essence of Ansellite Orkishness, and yellow contrast paint is really very good indeed. This mini was so quick to paint that I think I should go back and try and do some black and white checks or something… but i always fuck it up when I try to get too clever so maybe its done!
The Eldar of Craftworld Lugganath are considered savage and uncivilised by other Eldar. There are far more of them devoted to reaving and piracy than from other Eldar societies, and they are warlike and cynical, hasty and bloodthirsty. As the 41st millenium (by human reckoning) breathes its last, Arthmael’s Corsairs are struggling to find their way back to the spires of their home. Eldar Corsairs are often young Eldar who have been blooded as Guardians in war, but who have not yet devoted themselves to the path of the warrior. They travel in search of new webway routes and entrances, reaving and stealing as they go, hopping from real-space into the webway and back again, acting as scouts and pathfinders for Lugganath society. Arthmael led a corsair gang operating on the far Eastern edge of the Segmentum Obscurus, and was mid-way through a standard exploration expedition when the Great Rift opened. This explosion of chaos damaged the webday, destroying some paths, pouring daemons into others. Whilst Arthmael’s unit were not in the webway at the time, they have struggled since then to find a way back. Shortly after the opening Arthmael, a skilled and cunning Warlock, was killed by a ricochet during an attempt to gain entrance to a webway portal occupied by the Death Guard. Since Arthmael’s death, the rest of the corsair squad has been whittled down by attrition in any number of battles with chaos and Imperial forces. They lack basic equipment and have been reduced to plundering human weapons and even food. They are squabbling amongst themselves, and becoming nihilistic in outlook…
I have never painted Eldar before, so this was a fun diversion. I used mostly contrast paints, which I am starting to get used to. The Eldar themselves are a mix of Rogue Trader Guardians and Third Ed. Dark Eldar. Bits of this work and bits don’t, but I’m fairly happy with it. I chose Lugganath because I wanted a nice bright colour-scheme, which it certainly it. One thing I never noticed before is that all the RT Guardians have cloths hanging from their belts. Could this be a reference to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handkerchief_code? Considering that Orks called Eldar pansies I suspect it might be.
Final completed work for now, this little lot is another attempt to play with Constrast paints, again with mixed results. Commissar Raine is firmly newhammer, released within the last year or so. I thought it was a great sculpt, full of life and hyper-realistic despite being perfectly in-universe. When I opened the box I was surprised and disappointed. If I hadn’t received this item directly from GW Mail Order I would have thought it was a recast. The detailing is lost, the resin feels flimsy, the pieces didn’t fit together very well. I have only positive experience of GW’s resin before this, and if the internet hadn’t been full of people making similar complaints I would have complained myself. I’ve made the best of it though, and generally I am happy with Severina. Sanctioned Psyker Sturm I am not so happy with. I just could not get his eyes right – I have so many problems with painting eyes, I really am not that good at the finework. I tried to paint one eye glowing with a green flame to indicate psychic doings, whether this makes it even more of a mess I don’t think I am qualified to say. Still, practice makes perfect they say, maybe next time I’ll be a bit better.
The non-GW minis in the squad are two troopers from a Bad Squiddo kickstarter. Nice minis, one of them has a really badly sculpted hand though. Hands are hard and plenty of early GW minis have similar problems. There is also Oleg, who has fallen through a fart in space-time from the Advance on Berlin and landed in a massed battle somewhere in the 41st Millenium. He is fairly clear on his orders though, do whatever the nearest commissar tells you to do, and so he has slid nicely from our dystopian past into our dystopian far future. His hands were well sculpted but his face is a mess that I lacked the skill to do anything with. Let’s pretend he earned the right to carry the banner by single-handedly knocking out a Nazi flamethrower team despite receiving serious burns. That’ll do!
Finally a handful of metal and plastic Imperial Guard that didn’t require much work, Contrast paints really good for simple paint jobs!
