Three posts already this year, not bad going. I don’t feel like I’m getting more leisure time than I was, I still feel overwhelmed and unable to cope, but I’ve clearly been able to do a bit of painting and modelling so that’s something. There are so many things I want to do, so many projects and protests and archives and DIY and learning and books to read and hobby ideas but no time to do any of it.
So Waaagh! Nikkaz. Nikkaz obviously has ambition, ten grots is hardly a waagh! These goblin pirate miniatures are lovely, proper oldhammer-esque. I’ve thrown in a few properly oldhammer grots too and another Makari as I seem to have Makaris out the wazzoo! No Ghazghulls, mind, just Makaris. A nice fun little project, and now I’ve only got four more squads left until I’ve painted every squad in Freebooterz.
Another post so soon? How did that happen? Mostly because these doggos just didn’t take that long. I considered servitorising them, maybe I will one day, but for now they’re cybernetics-free and happy that way….
I’m still alive, as busy or busier than ever but still getting to slowly grind out some finished miniatures. Here we have a Sternguard Veteran Squad, intended as a part of Chapter Master Melmoth’s honour guard. I used Contrast paints mostly, and the grey is much lighter. I think next time I am going to use the normal Mechanicus Standard Grey and use the Contrast paints to shade it. This is the Armour Through The Ages resin reprint of old lead miniatures and has recently been on Made To Order. This surprised me because I hadn’t realised it had been taken off sale in the first place. Its a bit sad when things you’ve bought have been removed from sale and them brough back again as classic one offs! Nice to get it painted finally. I really wanted to paint the Thunder Warrior, a mini I had when I was a lad. Its a proper 80s mini that should really have been painted in neon colours! I hope you are all staying Covid safe still. Its not over, and it might cause your immune system to go crazy and disable you, even if you’ve been vaccinated.
Oh my how busy I have been recently! Caring duties, union activities, an ongoing rat invasion that we just cannot seem to shift, buying and selling transformers on the internet to try and bring in some money, and of course firework season (in our house we call it canine nervous breakdown season). Eveything is fithy, many things are broken. The outside is moving inside via giant lurcher paws. What an Autumn! Instead of my usual three painting projects I am down to a single project, plus I am slowly working on the coaching inn from WD 143, and working through my giant tub of sprues to turn them into miniatures ready for painting or selling.
This is a land train that I picked up on Kickstarter a while back. It looked great on the internet but up close I wasn’t that impressed. The 3d printing grain was far too large, leading to smudged designs and a generally cheap look. The plastic didn’t stick properly with superglue, pva glue, plastic cement, or carpenter’s glue. Bits are always threatening to break off. In general I would not recommend it. But when I saw it I remembered a piece of art and some flash fiction from way back, about some raiders who attack a caravan and get a nasty chaos genestealer flavoured surprise. So I had to have it! Since this was made there is now an official Warhammer equivalent, the Cargo-8 Ridge Crawler. Though a Ridge Crawler and two carriages would be over 120 quid!
A digression into newhammer, I painted these guys because I like the miniatures so much. Full of detail and bursting with ideas. I like the idea that this is how some people slip into chaos worship, without even realising that they’re doing it.
Returning to the leadpile in search of a chaos character I find this chap, ideal! This is a great little miniature, mid-period GW, neither silly nor especially grimdark (given that he’s a Night Lord, for whom grimdark really means something). It was a pleasure to paint, although I chickened out of trying to paint lightning bolts all over him because my life is still hectic and my nervous system can’t handle the intense concentration that learning new painting techniques can take. It’s still an hour here or there really. Painting is like meditation in that the busier you are the more important it is to try and find some time to do it! I hope you’re all doing well and are enjoying the gradual return to normal. Remember that covid is still out there and some people are medically vulnerable so take care of yourselves and each other!
Pun intended. I tried to copy the Citadel Paint App instructions but they looked awful so I tried to grimdark them up a bit. To be honest they’re pretty crap but there you go!
Last up was this little collection of minis. Mostly Knightmare, with one of Tim Prow’s recent kickstarter as a leader, and there’s a citadel champion of Khorne in there too. As a kid that champion was my avatar in games, it was my favorite mini and I took so much care when painting it, it was probably my best painted mini. It managed to escape the great sell off of 2002 when I cleared out the attic at my mum’s and sold everything I found up there. It often showed up again over the next few years, and I thought it lived at the bottom of a coin jar. It disappeared during the dark years, 2009-10, when my life and mental health went utterly bugfuck, like a lot of my possessions, and sadly has never been seen again. Where did you go to, my dog-faced darling? A few years ago I picked it up on ebay from Brigend Steve and took great delight in painting him to go into this team. Actually I really enjoyed all of this lot. Knightmare’s beastmen mutants are such lovely sculpts, and Tim Prow’s snake-wizard-lady makes a great Slaaneshi champion.
That’s it for now. Inspired by this chaotic bunch I am working on a some more troops for a 40k chaos army, hopefully it won’t be too long!
My final orktober offering is an oldhammer-newhammer combi. When the Speed Freeks game came out a few years ago I fell in love with the ork vehicles inside but I couldn’t afford the whole box. Later I picked up this Boomdakka Snazzwagon, which is a lovely kit, feels very old school, full of orky goodness. It could easily pass for a battlewagon in my opinion, especially against the tiny metal vehicles of old. Orks can buy heavy weapons to mount on battlewagons, so the weapon roll out here is whatever i roll on those lovely charts (heavy bolter, heavy plasma gun, missile launcher). Speed Freekz also get access to cheap vehicles, so I added a warbuggy and wartrak (skorcha). Poor tiny vehicles! The skorcha really needs a (full size) modern kit, by the way GW, hint hint.
Now this is the squad that took all the time! Five mekboyz, three orky convershuns, a load of robot-proxies, and some hangers-on. This was a lot of fun but I really over-stretched myself. Once I totted up the points, this single squad costs an incredible 1240 points! To put that into context, the next most points heavy squad I have made from the Freebooterz book was the Outcast Oddboyz, who cost 440 points.
Because there is so much here I am going to break it down a bit what we’re looking at. The basic Renegade Mekboyz mob is a kaptin and four meks. I went a bit OTT with the tables and gave them three rolls on the ranged weapons chart, two rolls on the stikkbomz chart, a forcefield for the kaptin, three bionik bitz, and two kustom weapons! As an aside, these two kustom weapons at 25 points each are absolutely blinking superb. Check these out, I promise that these are all original rolls, no cheating or just making it up. 1x kombi – lascannon-heavy webber-boltgun; 1x kustom special – plasma gun +3st, +4″r, 3″ radius, normal rate of fire, d4 damage.
Yes, that’s right, one gun that is a lascannon heavy webber boltgun! And a plasma gun that you can fire every turn that is extra strong and has a three inch radius effect! I rolled a 6 and a 5 for number of effects, and all 5 effects were good’uns.
Each mek also allows you to purchase an oddbit or tinboyz mob, so I bought three looted wagons, a tinboyz mob, and a blitzcannon. Of course, I didn’t actually have any miniatures of those models, so I had to get creative. Imperial Whirlwind – I used a Warlord Games Katyusha. Imperial Sentinal – well, that’s chunks of a chaos dreadnought with Eldar dreadnought legs, I’ve decided that this is one of the Meks with mad bionik legs. Imperial Landspeeder – well, that’s actually a landspeeder so I did have one of the models. Tinboyz mob – these are Bob Olley steampowered scrunts that I bought on a whim and they are going to prozy for Imperial robots. Blitzcannon – this is a middlehammer lizardman dinosaur that I had knocking around. Stick a giant cannon on top and bobs yer uncle. The howdah is the thing I am least happy with, I should have put armour plates on the side and dags and stuff. More is less with Orkses!
There was a few dodgy bionik conversions too. A sword arm, an extra arm, and a squig attack arm. These meks are certainly prone to accidents. The squig attack arm was very tricky to make and looks quite frankly a bit crap, but as any oldhammer ork fan knows, its the doing that counts! I hope that you enjoy these Renegade Mekboyz! Sorry about the quality of the pics, my usual set up was unavailable so these are a bit darker than I would like.
Doris Plunger's Lead Mess 