Blood for the Blood Bowl God

I recently converted this figure up to repurpose him as a vampiric Blood Bowl player. He’s an old miniature from the characterful late eighties early nineties Citadel Night Horrors range. 

Snipped off his hand and replaced it with one from the modern GW human plastic spruce. Job Done.

Happy Halloween all ! 

Tale of Four Gamers Part 8: The Carrion Throng

For this month I decided to paint something a bit different and break up painting foot soldiers for a while. These models are great - although the undead birds all have the same basic body they are come with very different and marvellously sculpted heads to give them all a different feel.

I was missing a rider but luckily I was a backer in Diego Serrate's Pantheon of Chaos Kickstarter and the little hooded freebie dude with a scythe fits perfectly in both style and logistically - i.e he doesn't look too precarious sat on the back of his mount.

Enjoy!

Tale of Four Gamers Part 7 : The Burgeoning Cannibal Throng

So this month I knocked out another thirteen ghouls. I really enjoyed painting these carrion-eating wretches as I kept up quite a pace while doing so. There's a mixture of middlehammer Morley in here as well as some of the classic Night Horrors range.

Here they are mixed in with ghouls I painted back in month number one - which now feels a very long time ago!

Although collectively thirteen ghouls are 104 points my total so far in the challenge is 1074 which puts me well over the 1050 I needed by now. Just another 426 to go!

Tale of Four Gamers Nerves of Lead Part 6 - The Black King : Laomann the Abominable

The Black King : Laomann the Abominable

"Let me tell you a story. In the days when Sigmar was the first Emperor, over in the mysterious and barbaric lands of Albion numerous tribes wandered its fertile and misty fens fighting for glory and territory. One of the most powerful tribes, the Dornacates, was ruled by the powerful and strong King Gildas who in turn had sired two heirs - the fair Elerig and the weak and consumptive Laomann.

As was tradition the eldest son, Elerig, was set to inherit the command of the tribe upon his father's death while the second son would be the head of its mystic order. The Dornacates fought often and valiantly to defend their women and the children and beat back many tribes of men as well as the fen dwelling one eyed demons who stole their women and slaughtered its men. 

As was tradition at the age of fourteen Laomann was sent out alone into the marshes for thirty days and thirty nights to experience the visions gifted by the spirits. No one truly knows what happened to him there. Legends later say he died and the God of Death Mortus showed him the afterlife. Others say he was seduced by the fen monsters into rites of arcane and forbidden lore. Whatever happened he came back changed and more attuned to the magical arts, displaying considerable power compared to the parlour tricks of the tribe's witch doctors.

Meanwhile his father had died from an infected wound and upon his return the brave Elerig took control of the tribe while Laomann took control of its mystical order. Elerig was loved by his people - while he went to battle when needed he was fair and just to his tribesman in peace and he ruled this way for a year. He had a child called Kadec by his beautiful wife and for a time life for the tribe was good.

However Elerig started to succumb to a rotting disease and within weeks the flesh was peeling from his bones and he was more skeleton than man. In his dying breath he proclaimed Kadec his heir and that his wife should supervise him until he came of age. 

But it was not to be - no sooner had he died then he rose again. An automaton driven by dark arts and with his treacherous brother powering him through dark arts, the baby was torn limb from limb before he crushed he took the head of his beloved wife into his grasp and crushed it.

Others rose from their slumber, decayed hands clawing the earth and pulling themselves up to rend the living. Hundreds of tribesmen and women died through cold hearted murder and betrayal before Laomann gathered them cowering in front of him and told them that they can serve him - either as the living or the dead. They chose the former.

And with that he forced them into never ending wars to conquer that blighted Isle - as his power spread the land wilted and the living suffered, died to be born anew in his absolute control.

Yet there were darker forces in Albion than even the Black King. The one eyed demons returned and through twisted magic and brutal force decimated the Abominable One's forces. 

He was left to flee with a small number of his tribesmen who motivated by brutal vengeance decided to bury him in a perverse mockery of their burial rites - alive and breathing.

Little did they know that the enchanted jewel in the Black King's crown was dowsed into dark necromantic magics and would sustain him beyond the rot that would decimate his mind and his body. As his sanity deteriorated and his skin fell from his bones he would find himself alone in his perpetual tomb and a skeletal husk of his former self - truly the King of Worms.

Those who punished him did have sense to avoid any burial grounds though and interred him high on a rocky mountain so his dark magic could not turn the living to his aid.

After many thousands of years fate turned it's fickle hand to the Black King once more when a band of exploring Norsca froze to death near his resting place. Cold dead fingers soon began the long process of releasing their master and Laomann the Abominable would turn his vengeful gaze on the world once more..." 

Undead General: Level 10 Liche with hand weapon and two level 1 scrolls - 190 points

Tale of Four Gamers Nerves of Lead Part 5

So we're officially now half way through this challenge. So far Steve, Matthew and I have been level pegging it with the challenge so far and painting the required amount each month with Adam sadly having only completed one month's worth so far.

 News on the grapevine is Matthew won't be completing his minis this month and Adam will (hurrah!) so still all to play for in my book...

So this month is more skelly warriors with swords and shields, nine in all which come to 99 points between them. The absolutely classic screaming skull catapult adds another 60 so this months total is 159 points.

Tale of Four Gamers Nerves of Lead Part 4 - Happy New Year!

While Matthew and thansants knocked out their entries well ahead of me in the month despite all the free time I've had recently, I still find myself submitting my entry last minute and on New Year's Eve no less!

This month we have a Level 10 undead hero (69 points) with a magic sword (Parrying blade), heavy armour and a shield strapped to his back. The miniature is from Tim Prow's Diehard miniatures.

Accompanying him is a Wight (100 points) from Citadel's hallowed Night Horrors and Ethereals ranges which long term followers of the blog will know are an obsession of mine.

And with that all that leaves for me is to wish you a Happy New Year. May it be a good one! (let's face it 2016 was a bit crap really?)

Tale of Four Gamers : Nerves of Lead Part 3

For this month's entry I decided to bite the bullet and actually get a substantial number of troopers done in earnest. I just love skellies. I don't know why but they are simple to paint if unarmored and the old Citadel ones are some of the best.  But this little lot is a whole hotch potch.

I don't know where the clumsier sculpts are from. They are preslotta - I suspect they're Ral Partha. There's a citadel one on the end from the C18 range. The grave guard and drummer are pure Middlehammer Citadel while the guys at the back are actually Foundry (under the alias Casting Room miniatures) and so quite modern but with a definite old school vibe about them.

Here's a close up of the back row in case you want a closer look.

I really like these sculpts and so I think I'll get more of them. I love that they have sculpted expressions on what (should be) static skulls.

This lot come to 130 points. However I overcompensated in month 1 by painting 172 points so with the grand total so far of 452 points I am somehow still on target.

So what's next for December? Well there will probably be more boney offerings but of quite a different ilk... Stay tuned for more on that.

Tale of Four Gamers : Nerves of Lead Part 2

In October I went through a bit of a painting burnout so my entry for that month was a bit cheap and easy. Wraith are all cloak and sickle anyway so he was was a quick job but it's still 150 points in the bag.

Now onto November's entry. No slacking this month - I've got eleven skellies to do!

Tale of Four Gamers : Nerves of Lead Part 1

In time for this year's Bring Out Your Lead, four wise gamers decided to resurrect the Tale of Four Gamers challenge from yesteryear (now resurrected again as Tale of Four Warlords in the current White Dwarves).

The mission to paint 100 points of troops a month using the army lists from Third Edition Warhammer Fantasy Battle, blog about it and then beat the snot out of each other in a 1000 point ruck. It seems they had a wonderful time of it. Orlygg's fantastic account of the battle is here.

I prodded a few others to continue this fine tradition for BOYL 2017 and so thantsants , Matthew, Adam and yours truly struck a deal to continue this fine tradition. Matthew had the idea to make it 150 points a month for 10 months.

Warlord Paul agreed to adjudicate and call us to his office if we didn't do what we promised.

And so we four struck out on our quest in September : well apart from Adam.

Adam left his painting to the last minute and then got too hungover to start it. But that's another story.

I chose the undead.  I have had an (un)healthy obsession with walking corpses since my formative years and this challenge gave me a chance to let it free.

The necromancer Neil L Far-Aged comes to 60 points, the four ghouls come to 32 points together and the mummy another 80 points making a grand total of 172 points!

The ghouls were lovely to paint and despite being from different ranges they look great together.

It's nearing mid-October and I'm yet to get painting on the next 150 points so I'd best get to it pronto!

Bring Out Your Lead - Epic Warhammer Fantasy Battle 3rd Edition 'Rise of Morcar'

Over at the Oldhammer forum some ambitious types had the idea of running a game based around the idea of a massive Warhammer Fantasy Battle 3rd edition battle based around on the attempt of the Forces of Evil to summon the Ultimate Dark Lord from Heroquest Morcar. The idea was for this to be the ultimate battle between Good and Evil with literally no limits to the types and number of troops.

   Ambitious? Maybe. Foolhardy? Definitely. Fun? Hell yes.

  Luckily we had weazil on hand to try and interject some kind of order into this chaos and set some objectives and GM this spectacle. One one side were the forces of Good (Men, Elfs (High and Wood) and Dwarves) and on the side of the forces of Evil were Chaos, Orcs, Goblins, Fimir, Undead, Skaven, Chaos Dwarfs.....I think almost all races from the Old World were represented although I'm not sure if there were any Dark Elves or Nippon (but I may be wrong!).

The game started with the Fimir force in the centre of the table with Bran the Blessed and the Wizards of Morcar at a standing stone attempting to summon the Dark Lord. Realising this the Forces of Good came onto one side of the table to thwart this while to rescue Evil came in on the other. Other  standing stones were there and were needed to be erected and used to power the ritual at the main one. It was Good's job to demolish them or stop them being erected.

The Fimir in the centre got torn apart by the invading forces while the Evil Hero Bran the Blessed fell. Two other standing stones eventually fell, the Elven forces managing to hold off the Chaos and Undead on one flank.

Meanwhile another stone had little chance due to the departure of the Orcs and the dastardly but inevitable treachery of the Skaven. (The Skaven general was heard to snicker 'We only got included in Advanced Heroquest ...' in the dying embers of the battle). Meanwhile dragons turned up to slay two of the Wizards of Morcar while the other two used to magic to fly away away from the main stone which was looking increasingly under threat as an Earth Elemental appeared to knock it down in the final moments of the battle which saw the death of Morcar's sorcerers. It still stood but as a testament to Evil's shocking defeat.


Sorry if it all sounds a bit vague it probably is but as you can imagine with a game that took 8 hours and approximately 5000 troops it was quite hard to keep track of the forces I was commanding let alone the bigger picture. But it was still a thing of outstanding spectacle ( "glorious chaos").

I'm on a mission to try and find all the pictures of this battle (of which these are just a taster) that there are and I have done a good job of collating a lot from Facebook and people's blogs. Would be great to hear from you if you have some!

 If I get enough and can discern went I may even set up a more detailed report and summary if possible but will certainly seek to find a way to publish them all!

On a parting note here were the objectives passed to me by weazil which made me chuckle. They ring true on some many levels ;)

  

Zombies!

A quartet of shuffling undead horrors for your perusal.

The first two are Necromunda plague zombies and despite having a sci-fi purpose they looking perfectly fine for fantasy. I mistook the pipes in their hands for bones but I figured some screwy necromancer or other weirdo has grafted metal banding to them then what the hell?

  The second is from Harlequin miniatures and the last is a classic Citadel miniature from the long gone but not forgotten Fiend Factory range. I think the first three scale well against each other even if the last one is a bit 'blobby' - still lots of Oldschool charm though!

Dead containers

Ah coffins and sarchopaguses. Ordinarily the domain of the recently departed but in the hands of the necromancer they can become a box of nasty shocks.

Hello handsome!

The miniature is very old Grenadier ('83 I think) - I like the cheeky chap inside.

Some more pics and angles...

In the spirit of some more dead containers, a couple of classics from the old Citadel Night Horrors range (my own personal obsession). The coffin can either hold an ordinary corpse or a mummy however you deem fit - now that's flexibility!

All of this is intended as scenery for a homebrew game for myself and my partner. More to follow on that....

Heroquest Evil Sorcerer and Skeleton Command group

Finished this evil sorcerer from Heroquest a couple of weeks ago. Yet to decide how to base him other than with a grey coat but thinking cracks and maybe some moss should be added. Loving the resemblance to that villain of my childhood Skeletor!

Also finished a skeleton drummer and standard bearer from '93. Models are pretty gawky but I think they have their awkward charm.

I'm fairly happy with my first attempt at hand painting a banner design.

Back from the Dead

Things have been very quiet on blogging front recently. Mainly this has been because I hit a painter's block through all of December. I've really missed the best time to post up one of those full 'Here's what I did in 2015, here's what I'm gonna do in 2016' posts so I'll keep it short and sweet.

  More painting, less buying, more focus and gaming with what I have rather than picking up the next best thing. I want to play more and better with what I have and not head off into the undergrowth like a hound after a rabbit when something shiny and sparkling new comes along.

  To that end I'm trying to combine projects where possible. I am lucky enough to have a fantastic charity shop bargain hunting fiance who found me Heroquest for the lovely sum of one pound fifty for Xmas.

If you're one of the Oldhammer crew you probably know of this game. For thirty somethings like me it what probably drew us into the fanasty mini painting and gaming hobby in the first place. It's a dungeon crawler with very simple rules, created by MB games and Games Workshop with many of the monsters and tropes that carried onto into the Warhammer World. 

   It's like a lite version of recently released Dungeon Saga from Mantic. (although Dungeon Saga was probably inspired by it and not the other way around)

   So in the spirit of keeping things simple I've decided to combine the project of getting these board games minis painted up with an Oldhammer event I'm going to in March run by Orlygg over at the Realm of Chaos 80s blog.

The mission is to take two units (one good, one evil) to the event and they must be of roughly equal sizes. For my unit the evil side will be taken up by Skeleton Grim Reapers. 

Yep the bases need more ornamentation and there's a named character, standard bearer and musician to come. The latter two will be rebased and make their way into my undead Warhammer horde after the event is done while the rest will go home to the board game.

See - nice and simple. 

Halloween Horror Painting Challenge

Over on Facebook I run a group dedicated to the appreciation of the classic Night Horror and Gothic Horrors produced by Citadel Miniatures in the late eighties and early nineties. It's Halloween soon and in the run up to that I'm running a painting challenge for the best painted miniature of one of those ranges.

Best of all there's a prize of old lead for the lucky winner!

To enter you need to be a member of the Facebook group - 

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1611509909078469/

THE RULES

1. The mini must be newly painted and from one of the Citadel ranges Gothic Horrors or Night Horrors. Links to these ranges are referenced at the end of the post. ( from the Stuff of Legends website). If you're not sure check the links and as I'm not all-seeing and you have found a reference to these ranges I have missed then PM me.
2. Entrants should be submitted from the 4th September to 16th October 2015. A picture/picture(s) of the entry should be posted to the group clearly indicating it is a submission for the comp and the entrant should be a member of the group.
3. Once entries have been submitted the admin will set up an album of all entries and all members will be allowed to vote on one entry to win (members can't vote on their own entry)
4. Voting will finish at midnight 31st October.
5. The winner will be announced on the 1st November and the prize will be sent to them.

http://www.solegends.com/citc/c18nighthorrors.htm
http://www.solegends.com/citgothic/index.htm
http://www.solegends.com/citgames/mummy/index.htm
http://www.solegends.com/ci…/numbered/le03gumshoes/index.htm
http://www.solegends.com/citgoth/goth85/index.htm
http://www.solegends.com/citgoth/goth87/index.htm
http://www.solegends.com/citgothflyers/index.htm
http://www.solegends.com/citcat1989/cat1989p036-02.htm
http://www.solegends.com/ci…/cat1991bp310nighthorrors-02.htm
http://www.solegends.com/citca…/cat1991bp311ethereals-02.htm

(note: there is a large crossover between the Night Horrors and Ethereals range and because of this these minis are admissable)

Many hands make light work...

Just a funny picture of my zombie's attempts to mug Crooks' mutant during our most recent Mordheim game. She has more hands than there are zombies. The mini is Deschala I believe...

Found: Wayward Heroquest Skeleton at Medieval Fair

Sorry I have been a bit AWOL from the blog recently. I have plenty of exciting stuff coming up soon what with the promise of a game of Necromunda at our next meet - yay! This has meant plenty of researching colour schemes for my goliath gang as well as realising I don't have appropriate minis for heavies or my leader. Much pondering and I have realised I will just have to cobble some together from the Catachan command boxed set - even if this gives me a perfectly valid reason to break my oath not buy any more minis *whistles*

I already have a juve almost painted up and a pic will be on its way once I have made my lightbox...

As well as this I finished off my Chaos Marine Sorcerer and started painting my greenstuffed skeleton pirates.

Speaking of skeletons check out my wonderful girlfriend's purchase for me at a medieval fair! Can't think of anywhere more appropriate to find this little guy....

(PS. In case you are wondering that is not my girlfriend in the picture but a friend of hers who found the smelly)

Mordheim Ghouls and a Dire Wolf

As promised here are the ghouls and the dire wolf from my Mordheim warband. I have only started recently using glazes and decided to use them pretty extensively on these models. I am happier on the results on the ghouls compared to the results the direwolf. Because of the latter's fur the glazes tended to feel into the recesses while they did a better taint at tinting the ghouls' flesh (which was a basecoat of GW's Rotting Flesh mixed with Skull White).

  Ghoul numero one:

This guy is from Citadel's C18 Night Horrors Range from the mid eighties. A real golden oldie. I have a banshee and wraith from that range also, but at the back of my mind is the idea that I would like to collect them all. If you have some to sell, send me a message ;)

This guy is a lot more recent but I am not sure when. If you know, send me a bell!

And lastly, the dire wolf. He was all painted up for the game last Tuesday and was then promptly slaughtered in combat by one of Dan's Shadow Warriors! Out of action turned into a kill when rolling post-game :(  For that reason, it is unlikely he will see a gaming table again for a while.